I am beginning to realize that I cannot do it all. Writing weekly or every other week blog posts and sending weekly newsletters is not sustainable when I am working full time on top of a private practice consisting of workshops, supervision, consultation and psychotherapy. And though I have not been practicing that level of engagement on my website, blog and in social media, for some reason I still carry around guilt about that, like I should be doing more. Sometimes the expectations we put on ourselves and the standards we hold ourselves to are not realistic or even fair. So here I am, finally accepting my limitations. Embracing what is as okay. Sometimes it is hard to do this. We want to feel we have control of our circumstances. and we do, just not in the way that many of us are taught to expect. We can invite things into our life, manifest if you will. However, there are still circumstances that are beyond our control which we do not invite into our lives.

This is where acceptance is important. It is not a passive sort of acceptance, nor is it a blaming one. It is more of a realization that though we may not be able to change parts of our circumstances, we can certainly change our experience of them. We can choose to respond differently with compassion for ourselves. Compassion is not passive, it is an act of recognizing our humanity, our limitations and need for connection.

As Kristen Neff explains it, the 3 parts to self compassion include:

1. Self-kindness (not self-judgement)
2. Common humanity (rather than isolation)
3. Mindfulness (instead of over identification- we are not whatever the challenge is).

When we act from a place of self-compassion we are more likely to take actions that can mitigate our circumstances rather than being pulled into and endless pit of despair. Here is a short video I found which is a good reminder of why self-compassion is needed along with some ideas to help you put it into practice.

Practice self-compassion rather than self-criticism. We may not have control over our circumstances but we do have a say in how we respond.