Have you ever found yourself stressed out and thinking that you should be more positive and focus more on what’s good in your life?  What if what you actually needed was to lovingly embrace your pain?

The other day a woman E-mailed me asking when I would be teaching my positivity course again.....

A friend of hers had recommended that she take a self-compassion intro workshop with me.  Her friend had shared with her about the transformation that she had experienced through learning to skillfully embrace, rather than avoid challenging emotions.  I found it curious that even though her friend had recommended a self-compassion training, this woman had e-mailed me inquiring about my happiness course.  I recognized a potential pitfall that many of us (including me) can sometimes fall into.

Here was my response to her inquiry:
“Thank you for reaching out.  I usually offer my positivity class when I have a number of ‘graduates’ from my other classes who have learned to meet their struggles with compassion and are ready for the next step. 
 
It's a curious paradox that learning to meet our difficulties with more compassion and kindness can be a gateway to cultivating more positive emotions.  Though certainly we can master lessons in any order, without the previous trainings there can be a tendency to grow positivity as a way to ‘push away’ the difficult, which doesn't work well.”
 
I then told her about the self-compassion workshop that I was teaching.  Among other things, self-compassion training teaches us is to be mindful of our struggles, to recognize that we are not alone, and to practice kindness when we are having a difficult time.  While this can be painful, it is also necessary.  Positivity with out the capacity to "be with" struggles is a recipe for imbalance and increased anxiety.

Please don't misunderstand.  Cultivating gratitude and soaking in the good is absolutely essential to our well-being.  But happiness will elude us when we try to use positivity as a strategy to avoid interfacing with that which is challenging.  Learning to meet our own struggles with compassion is both a gateway and a firm foundation for the happiness that we desire in life.

How you can begin your own self-compassion journey:  The next time you find yourself stressed out, instead of viewing your struggle as a personal failure, see if you can remind yourself that it is natural to feel difficult emotions when you have too much on your plate or when life throws a curve ball your way.  Perhaps you can offer yourself some supportive and encouraging words—words that you might offer to a friend who was having a similar challenge. 

The other night I lay in bed, unable to fall asleep.  I was feeling sadness about something that had happened earlier in the day, and I offered myself a little compassion for the difficulty.  I then went through my usual repertoire of things I do when I lay in bed: I thought about three good things that had happened that day, and then I did the 61 points meditation that so often lulls me to sleep.

I was still awake.  So, I repeated the sequence: three more “good things” and another round of 61 points.

Still awake.  Hmmm….  What now?  I wondered to myself.  Should I get up and do some mindful yoga?  Or stay in bed?  Then it flashed into my mind that I could offer myself kind wishes.  I felt compassion for my little sleepless self, and I began to offer myself kind phrases:  May I be safe.  May I be happy.  May I be healthy.  May I live with ease.  I repeated these phrases slowly and kindly in my mind, and it felt good.  Like an extra warm blanket covering me while I lay awake in bed.

At some point my mind dazed off, and eventually I fell asleep.  I feel so grateful for my self-compassion tools (and mindfulness and gratitude practices) that offer me comfort when I encounter the inevitable challenges of daily (and nightly) life.

Note: I have guided audios of 61 points and loving kindness/ kind wishes meditations available on my website if you’re curious to try (maybe next time you can’t sleep : http://www.whollymindful.com/guided-meditations.html).

I recently began teaching a mindfulness curriculum to a group of middle school students in a Milwaukee Public School.  Before I even began teaching, one of the middle school teachers said to me, "Mindfulness doesn't work."

Hmmm.....I thought.  Mindfulness is about intentionally being present in the present moment in a non-judgmental way.  To say that mindfulness doesn't work is like saying, "The present moment doesn't work."  The statement, "The present moment doesn't work," doesn't make any sense because the present moment isn't supposed to "do" anything.  The present moment is simply the present moment.

I shared this with my students and inquired about what it is that they thought that mindfulness was supposed to "do."  They shared with me that they had been told that mindfulness was supposed to make them calm, and they thought that using mindfulness was not going to "work" to make them calm. 

"Mindfulness is not about being calm," I shared with my students. "Mindfulness is about being present."  I then shared with my students a story about how I had practiced mindfulness just before teaching.  I had felt nervous that morning because I had never taught this particular group of students, and instead  of trying to make my anxiety "go away" (which would likely have compounded my anxiety), I turned toward it.  I said to myself, "I'm feeling anxious," and I reminded myself that it is common to feel anxious before teaching a new group of students.  I brought my attention inside my body and noticed how it felt hot and tight in my neck and shoulders, and there was a buzzy sort of feeling  that radiated through my entire body.  I intentionally brought my attention into the soles of my feet to help myself feel grounded, and I noticed my breathing.  Because I noticed that my body and my breath were indicative of a "fight or flight" response, I also chose to intentionally slow down my breathing.  Regulating the breath is not a mindfulness strategy, but my mindfulness practice of observing the anxiety response in my body helped me to make the skillful choice of intentionally slowing down my breath.

The idea that mindfulness is about being calm is one that I often hear propagated by well-meaning parents, teachers in schools, and even by mindfulness instructors themselves.  I think that the reason that people market mindfulness as a "strategy" to stay calm is because calm is often a by-product of practicing mindfulness.  Research is clear that the long-term effects of practicing mindfulness include the ability to regulate and maintain a sense of evenness or calm in the face of stressful circumstances and emotions.  However, if we practice mindfulness as a strategy to make a difficult emotion or thought go away, we may end up feeling more anxious because resisting an experience often causes a secondary wave of anxiety.  If we instead embrace difficult emotions with a compassionate and mindful awareness, even if the difficult feelings temporarily increase, our long-term trajectory is toward equanimity--a sense of evenness amidst the ups and downs of life.

Even though practicing mindfulness is not about producing a state of calm in the moment, practicing mindfulness over time can help us to stay present and grounded amidst the continual ups and downs of this human experience.  This evenness in the face of difficult experiences in turn sets the stage for us to make skillful choices that can help us to more fully enjoy this journey of life.