Category: Uncategorized

“Unless you tackle and weaken your own internal enemies-we’ll call
them the Saboteurs–they will do their best to rob you of any
improvements you make. Ignoring your Saboteurs is analogous to
planting a beautiful new garden while leaving voracious snails free

to roam.”

-Shirzad Chamine: Positive Intelligence

Happy January!
It’s been awhile! I hope you are well 🙂

How are you feeling at the start of this new year?
Where are you with setting intentions, goals, habits for this fresh start?
It is almost cliche to speak about how most of us fail at following through
with our New Year’s resolutions! However, it is inevitable that many or most
of us who set resolutions (or goals, intentions) will end up floundering at
some point early on and don’t fully follow through.
This can be for a number of reasons:
Our goals are unreasonable
They don’t inspire us
We make vague ones that are hard to consistently take action on
but really….
The biggest reason why our New Year’s resolutions fail is because we don’t
take care of our inner critic first.
I have unequivocally seen in my own life and those in my clients that an
untamed inner critic will support you in setting unreasonable goals,
choosing “should” goals, and keeping those goals vague because this is a
recipe for not following through and losing steam.
Our crafty inner critic does this because it does not want us to change! It
wants us to keep doing what we’ve been doing, even if we aren’t feeling
so great or it would make our lives better to shake things up.
Your inner critic’s #1 aim is to keep you safe.
If you are alive and surviving right now it will assume that what you’ve
been doing in the past is what is best to keep doing.
It will fight tooth and nail to keep you where you are. Change puts you at
the mercy of the unknown and within the uncertainty of the unknown is the
possibility of danger.
So despite all your best efforts, if you aren’t on top of your inner critic, it will
constantly be in the background sabotaging your attempts at change.
No good!
My dear friend and talented yogi, writer, and happiness expert, Heather
Kokx asked me to write a guest blog post on this topic.

In the article, I break down exactly why everyone has an inner critic and
some concrete steps to start practicing so that your inner critic doesn’t
impede your success at becoming a happier YOU this year!
Read it here:
The #1 Thing to Master to Uncover Lasting Peace and Happiness
(heatherkokx.com)

Also, if you’d like a deeper dive on how to pull in the reins on your inner
critic, I’m part of an online Wellness Weekend hosted by two amazing
coaches Beth Eldridge and Marla Press.
On January 30th, I’ll be leading a workshop on exactly how to tame the
inner critic so that it is no longer standing in the way of your happiness
and success. We’ll dig into what specific practices and process help quiet
the negative inner chatter and how to awaken your inner compassionate
voice instead.
Learn more about my workshop –Tame Your Inner Critic– and the
Wellness Weekend here:
Creating Wellness Together: Keys to Wellness in Relationships, Work, and
Fun

Here is to a year with unimpeded progress towards your deepest desires
and most fulfilling life!

Cheers,
❤
Jennifer

“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious
life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to
look good and creating the illusion that you have power over
circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find

out the truth about who you are.”

-Anne Lamott

In Bonnie Ware’s book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying she shares what
she learned from supporting people through the last 12 weeks of their lives.
The top regret that people shared was that they’d wished they had the
courage to live a life true to themselves and not the life others expected
of them.

Wow, right?
We all know this. That much of what we pursue and do in life might not be
what we “ultimately” want to pursue and do. However, we are great story
tellers and share stories like
“The time isn’t right”
“I have to do this because…”
“I have limited options”
“What if I make the wrong choices and end up even further away?”
“I might fail and that would feel awful, this dream is too important to
me”
“Others would reject/shame/judge me and I can’t handle that”
It is scary and hard to pursue a life true to yourself! Heck, it is hard to figure
out what living true to yourself even really means!
But I imagine that if you were presented with two clear paths.

1. A life filled with the trials and challenges of figuring out what living
   true to yourself meant and following through with it.
2. Or a life lived without facing those challenges but left with a regret
   on your deathbed that you didn’t follow your heart.
   Most (if not all) of us would choose the first path.
   And even with this clarity, many of us don’t!
   It’s because it isn’t easy.
   It’s because it takes time to stop and reflect and get really real about
   what matters.
   It’s because it takes energy and space to turn away from the siren call of
   those around us and look inward to find out what makes us tick.
   And it’s because it takes courage and vulnerability to pursue our lives in
   this way, when others might not approve, understand, or like it.
   So if you haven’t been living a life that feels true to yourself, do yourself a
   favor and be kind to yourself in this moment.
   Here is where the firm but kind presence of self-compassion plays a
   keystone role.

It is hard enough to pursue a life being true to ourselves. Then add in all
the time we try to be true but still get lost and fail.
It is essential that as we pursue a life that lights us up and offers the best
of us to the world that we are on our own side along the way.
I can’t imagine that on my death bed I will regret being kind and
compassionate to myself
I cannot even fathom the opposite, that I would wish that I had been
harder and more critical with myself!
This week I offer you this opportunity to reflect. Take a moment as you
read the following questions and think about them with honesty and
kindness.
Have you been living a life true to your values, your deepest
aspirations, and what brings you alive?
Do you know what those things are?
Are you willing to be kind to yourself and have your own back as you
continue to figure it out?
Often, this is work not meant to be done alone! It can feel overwhelming to
navigate these big questions and the practical “how to” side of things.
Coaching offers this space. Coaches guide us to the right questions, help
us look at our demons, reframe the fears, and offer perspectives that steer
us in the direction of regret-free living.
I also happen to help people know and learn how to be their own best
friend along the way. (Living a life without regrets is much easier when we
have our own backs!)
Imagine being faced with important decisions (like where to move, what
job to take, how to handle your health) and confidently choose because
you’ve got an inner compass that guides you.
Imagine knowing what the right thing for you to do is and just doing it
without the endless back and forth, doubt, and worry because you trust
yourself to make the right decisions.
Imagine climbing into bed each night with an imense sense of
satisfaction and security knowing that you are indeed pursing a life that is
filled with purpose and truly lights you up.

If you haven’t taken me up on my offer of a free coaching call, please
click on the button below to schedule a session. I’d love to support you in
separating out the essential from the noise and knowing how to be your
own best friend through it all.

❤ Jennifer

Has anyone told you lately that you are doing a good job?
Have you told yourself that?
In my coaching, I emphasize giving ourselves credit for all the good work
that we do each day.
This is an important thing to do when we are trying to live healthy lives full
of compassion and motivation.
However, it is one of the hardest things for many high-achieving women to
do.

It feels weird and awkward and doesn’t take into account the very real
evidence that we see that we are actually falling short in so many areas.
Whenever, I point out to my clients how many AMAZING things they
accomplish every week they often feel a little embarrassed or simply
shrug it off with “I guess…”
I totally get this because it is often what I do when others celebrate me.
This is not good!
Honoring all our hard work gives us strength to keep moving forward. It
gives us the perspective to see how far we’ve come and how amazing we
are so that we have the courage to keep trying new things. It also gives us
the blessed permission to sometimes STOP and take a break, knowing that
it is well-deserved (and likely overdue).
We definitely need to know how to give this to ourselves. To me this is an
often overlooked companion to self-compassion. We need to learn how to
sit with ourselves with love when we are suffering AND how to joyfully
celebrate and honor ourselves in our successes (big and small).
And at times we need someone else to lift us up and hand us a gold star.
We are not meant to live life in isolation and we need others to support us,
reflecting back our innate goodness and hard earned efforts.
We, of course, don’t want to become dependent on others to do this for us
without knowing how to offer it to ourselves…I’m not saying that we should
always be looking outward to others for affirmation of our efforts.
But it is okay to need it, to want it, and receive it from others.
Sometimes the external validation given from a outside compassionate
presence is exactly what we need to recover our own sense of how to
honor it ourselves.
So I’m handing you a gold star today for all you are doing, being, and are
becoming.
I know that you are truly doing a good job with the best you have to give.
I have absolute fath that you are being a good human today and are
doing incredible things that you forget to give yourself credit for.
Here are some things you might overlook but could take credit for:

Smiling at another person.
Feeding yourself some good food or drinking water.
Caring for another individual and offering them some love.
Pausing (even slightly) and responding rather than reacting.
Feeling empathy for another person.
Feeding your animals/children/partner. Watering plants.
Offering comfort to another being.
Making a mistake and making amends.
Trying something new and practicing courage.
The list could go on. I guarantee that if we were to chat that I could find
hundreds of things to celebrate you for (some ordinary and some quite
extraordinary!).
So go ahead, be brave accept this gold star! Acknowledge that you are
doing a good job!
By honoring this you are actually giving yourself energy and perspective to
keep growing and becoming the best version of yourself (which is really
always a work-in-progress).
Sending you a wealth of gold stars this week and the courage to truly
embrace the goodness that you bring to the world (just by you being
you!).

❤
Jennifer

*Do you know a woman who absolutely shows up for others, but is lost on
how to do that for herself? Please forward this email onto them. The world
needs all of us at our best and that means being kind to ourselves! Let’s
start a “LOVEVOLUTION”! *
;)❤❤❤ 😉

“A need is life seeking expression within us.”
“If we don’t tell people about our needs it is much less likely they will
be met.”
-Marshal Rosenberg

Happy Fall!
Writing a short note to you today to request your help in spreading the word
about the 9 week self-compassion course I’m co-leading this October. I’d really
appreciate if you’d check out the website and if anything resonates consider
sharing it with those it could support.

Check it out HERE: Science of Self-Love: Mindful Self-Compasion Course

As you know, this work has been particularly empowering to me over the past
several years and I believe strongly that it can o

er needed support to those of

us who are…
people pleasers
over achievers
caretakers
and those of us that are much kinder to others than we are to ourselves.
I feel passionately that this work needs to get out into the world and have a
burning desire to be of service to those it can support.
However, I need help spreading the word. This feels vulnerable to name, but
one of the many lessons I’ve gleaned from learning to love myself is that it is
okay to ask for what you need.

Many of us (myself included) have a challenging relationship with our needs. The
word “need” in and of itself can be triggering.
Most of us have a strong desire to not be “needy” and add in a culture that
values independence, “making it on your own”, and the “lone hero narrative” and
you’ve got a recipe for a whole lot of people who don’t know, accept, or feel safe
asking for what they need.
When we don’t know how to greet and meet our needs, su

ering happens

collectively in big and small ways.
So I’m on a mission to embody and spread the idea of our needs being okay. It’s
okay to need what we need and to pursue meeting those needs (with kindness,
humility, and creativity).
Loving ourselves has to be the foundation for this mission. When we love and
accept ourselves unconditionally, we also trust that we can and will meet our
own needs.
This love and acceptance provides the safety needed to look deeply at our own
needs, be vulnerable when we’d like support in meeting them, and not take it
the wrong way when others aren’t able or willing to help us.
So from this place of love and acceptance my request is sent out to you today.
Here is the site again: Science of Self-Love: Mindful Self-Compasion Course
Please consider checking it out and sharing it with those who could bene
t.

Sending you o

in this new season with the invitation to consider where your

needs are going unmet lately.
Is there a need that you are denying?
Where could you drop more deeply into the idea that it is okay to need what you
need?
Because it truly is okay!
With gratitude,

❤
Jennifer

Lesson 2:

Striving is often unnecessary and can slow my success

I didn’t know how to let it be easy for most of my life.
I’m an achiever and have embraced the idea of working hard for my success. I
have all sorts of imbibed beliefs about hard work and value.
Not to say that you can’t go far with striving to do good work. But we often make
more work than is necessary.
For years, I worked my butt o

to “become a better friend to myself”. I learned a
lot about myself along the way…but I also learned the harder I worked, the more
work I found to do.

At the heart of this was the belief that I wasn’t “enough”. So of course needed to
“work hard” at becoming a better version of myself in order to “become enough”.
This is a trap that many of us fall into. We believe that we aren’t okay as we are
and we need to strive to be better.
AND…
What I’ve found to be true is:
We are enough, just as we are
Striving to be enough blocks us from feeling like we are enough

The
rst time I heard the invitation to let my self-compassion practice be easy…
like slipping into a warm bath, I thought, “What the heck is that like?” and then
allowing the imagery to sink in thought, “ahhhhh”. Easy as exhaling.
What if the soft pleasure of giving yourself some kindness became a subtle but
in
nitely more powerful form of motivation than pushing yourself to “be more”?
What if the paradox of letting things be easy would allow you to work less at
being more? More loving, patient, happy… because you have the resources (that
previously were used to motivate yourself to work hard and power through) to
show up that way?
Life inherently holds hardship. This being human isn’t always easy.
However, by letting go of striving for striving sake we can de

nitely make life

easier!
So here are some examples of where I’m dropping the striving and let it be
easy (or easier 🙂
Allow myself short cuts with cooking.
When I’m bringing a meal to someone in need during a busy week, I
buy some (or all) of the meal premade. For years, I would get totally
stressed out (and miss the gift of giving) by expecting myself to
make everything by scratch.
Doing 15 minutes of exercise and letting it be enough.
When I
rst started my exercise program, it was a struggle to do “up,
up, down, downs” and I feared I’d never improve without hard work.
So I decided to add 10 of these to every workout. Yup…this lasted for

about a week and then totally got dropped. But I did keep up my 15
minutes of daily exercise. Two months later, I realized during a
workout that I no longer dreaded them and had become strong
without the addition practice.
Not over-preparing for presentations.
In my self-compassion teacher training we taught pieces of the
course to each other. However, we wouldn’t know what part of the
class we were going to lead, until the hour before class. I often had
calls before class and wouldn’t see what I needed to teach until 15
minutes before. I learned that even if I hadn’t “practiced enough”, if I
showed up with loving, connected, presence (even imperfectly) it
was more than enough. Presence always outperformed perfectly
practicing.

One way I let my self-compassion practice be easy is by joining a community to
learn.
Being in community accelerates our learning. It is in

nitely easier to show up
when you are accountable to a loving group and have structure to support your
practice.
I would not have grown so much this past year if I hadn’t been enveloped in a
loving, supportive community.
To that end, my fellow coach and self-compassion teacher Sarah Murphy and I
are o
ering the nine week Mindful Self-Compassion course this October. We are
thrilled to take all our training and o

er it out in the world, creating the space for

others to deepen their skills and experience of self-compassion.
I’ll share more about this in the coming weeks but the initial details are below.
This week I invite you to re

ect and imagine where you could let some part of

your life be easier…like slipping into that warm bath.

With Ease,

❤
Jennifer

Our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the
barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

-Rumi

You know something is important when you keep encountering it in every
book you read!
Over the past month, I’ve been surprised (and not) at how in almost every
book I’ve read, the topic of self-compassion arises as an important skill to
possess.

Here are a few examples:
Indistractable by Nir Eyal
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia
Nagoski
The Confidence Code by Katty Kay & Claire Shipman
Yes, to be fair these all would fall in the self-help section of the library, but
across the board every single one of them mentions the importance of
self-compassion.
Whether you are growing confidence, increasing your ability to focus,

handling stress more productively, or living a life without regrets self-
compasion is a crucial element!

Over the years I’ve started a collection all the good things that come with
practicing self-compassion. Some of these are personal changes and
other are well researched benefits that I can also attest to experiencing in
my own life and witnessing in the lives of my clients.
Here are some of them:
Greater levels of confidence and positive mood
Increased motivation for positive changes (ie: eating healthy,
exercising, managing time)
Ability to stick with changes for longer
Improved relationships (with partners, children, friends)
Greater resilience (your ability to handle challenging situations with
grace and recover more quickly)
Willingness to try new things and embrace change
Decreased anxiety, depression, and stress

Who wouldn’t want this?
And yet, it becomes one of those vague things that we say we “should do”.

---

“Oh yeah, I really should be kinder to myself. I know it’s good for me, but….”

---

I think this happens for a couple reasons:

1. Being kind to yourself is vague. What does it mean? How do we do it?
   What does it actually take to grow this skill?
2. It’s hard. We’ve been conditioned to do the exact opposite and so it
   feels weird, awkward, and new.
3. We turn it into another “thing” to do on our endless list. Nothing feels
   easy or fun as an obligation.
4. It’s scary. Our negative habits and inner critical voice have been
   there for so long and are tightly interwoven into how we motivate
   ourselves. We are genuinely afraid that if we no longer have them we
   will end up on the couch, covered in potato chips and/or icecream,
   and watching Netflix without restraint

I’ve struggled with ALL of these over the past 10 years as I’ve learned to be
kinder to myself.
But I don’t any longer!
Today I have a consistent self-compassion practice and encourage
myself the way that my best friends do. And while my life isn’t perfect, I do
experience daily all the lovely benefits I listed above!
The number one thing that got me out of the fears and excuses to a place
of practicing self-compassion (and experiencing all the wonderful
benefits) wasn’t information, or an amazing book (which I read plenty of!).
The thing that really changed me for good was having a concrete plan
with actionable steps as well as the personalized support to make it
happen.
I honestly wouldn’t be where I am today without my mentors and teachers
and the structured process they offered.
Information is great but without commitment and consistent action no
one ends up where they want to be.
This is why I created my course: Become Your own Best Friend: Tame Your
Inner Critic and Awaken Your Authentic Self. I wanted to share the

blueprint that I used to transform my own self-doubt and sabotage into
confidence and self-trust and deliver it in a way that got lasting results in
less time.
I spent over 10 years trying to learn how to be kinder to myself. I’d love to
save you the stress and time and show you how to do in in under 10 weeks.
So if you are:
weary and burned out on caring for others in a big way
anxious and tired from the constant negative chatter in your mind
stuck in a cycle of setting big goals and never fulfilling them and then
feeling like a constant failure
fed up with being hard on yourself and seeking validation from
others
And ready to be:
comfortable in your own skin and deeply grounded in your own
knowing
energized by life and your purpose
successful in what you set out to do, knowing that you have the
strength to learn from mistakes and keep moving forward
a steady source of love and support for yourself

Then please check out my course below.
Life inherently holds so much hardship, let’s not add to the pain by being
hard on ourselves as well!

❤
Jennifer

*Do you know a woman who might be interested in this class? Please
forward this email onto them. The world needs all of us at our best and
that means being kind to ourselves! Let’s start a “LOVEVOLUTION”! *
;)❤❤❤ 😉

Argh! Sigh Ugh 😛 Sniff Hooray!

As human beings we experience more negative emotions than positive
ones. Researchers are not set on the exact number of basic emotions but
whomever you ask the majority of them are what we would label as
negative.
In one of my favorite movies exploring emotions, Inside Out, the plot
revolves around an 11 year old named Riley and the inner workings of her
mind which are controlled by her 5 basic emotions: Anger, Fear, Disgust,
Sadness and Joy.
Which of these would you label as positive?
In the film, the character Joy is always trying to limit the influence Sadness
has over Riley and her memories. After Riley’s family makes a big move to
a new city, this results in disaster as Riley is less and less able to access
and “feel” her sadness as it gets buried within her mind. It is only at the end
(spoiler) once she is fully able to feel and process her sadness around the
move is she able to reach out and receive the support that she needs.

I love this movie because it demonstrates so clearly what often happens
for us in our emotional landscape. We try to deal with these so called
negative emotions with strategies that often leave us less able to cope
with life.
The healthiest thing that we can do is practice acceptance and live with
all of our emotions.
But we often don’t.
In Susan David’s book Emotional Agility she brings up two strategies that
many of us apply in our lives to defend ourselves against our negative
feelings.
Bottling and Brooding.
Many of us use both strategies to cope but most of us use one more than
another.
Read the descriptions below to make a guess on your preference:
Bottling:
You hate your job but are scared to look for another one so you tell
yourself that you are lucky to have work when so many are
unemployed.
You just had a fight with your partner and so you dive into an urgent
project at work.
Susan writes, “Bottlers try to unhook by pushing emotions to the side and
getting on with things. They’re likely to shove away unwanted feelings
because those feelings are uncomfortable or distracting, or because they
think that being anything less than bright and chipper is a sign of
weakness, or a surefire way to alienate those around them.”
Brooding:
You received difficult feedback at work and you spend hours thinking
about what you could have done differently and what you need to do
to improve in the future.
You snap at your partner after a long day and you spend the evening
criticizing yourself and wondering why you are always so irritable.

Susan says, “When hooked by uncomfortable feelings, brooders stew in
their misery, endlessly stirring the pot around, and around, and around.
Brooders can’t let go, and they struggle to compartnmentalize as the
obsess over a hurt, a perceived failure, a shortcoming, or an anxiety.”
Do you recognize yourself in any of these descriptions?
Wherever you land, the important piece is to realize that neither of these
brings us into a place of well being and balance. Neither helps us harvest
the important information that these emotions can share.
We also ultimately spend way more time and energy trying to avoid or
solve these emotions than we would if we could just feel them and move
on with living.
So we need to practice feeling our feelings, without resisting them or
getting lost in them and we need to know how to do that.
Below is a favorite practice of mine that helps process emotions and stay
present with the “felt sense” rather than perpetuating or blocking the
emotion with thoughts.
I’m also including a video series I recorded last year that walks you
through the process I use to hold emotions (especially big ones) with an
open, kind presence. This allows you to glean the important information
and then let them flow through you with more ease.
May these open up some more room in your life to live with your feelings
but not be dictated by them.

❤ Jennifer

The 90 Second “Feeling the Feels” Practice
In Pema Chodren’s book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and
Change, she references Jill Bolt Taylor and her research into how the
experience of anger only lasts for 90 seconds when we allow it.
Without any input from our thinking mind, our body naturally feels
an emotion and releases it.
I practice this throughout my day whenever I notice a strong
emotion arising or when I have a moment to be quiet and check in
with myself (waiting for tea to brew, my son to put on his shoes, my
cat to decide whether or not to get settled on my lap 🙂

1. Set a timer for 90 seconds or loosely watch a clock.
2. Close your eyes and notice what you are feeling.
3. Breathe with the feeling, noticing but not getting caught up in
   any thoughts about the emotion.
4. Connect with the bodily sense of what it is like to experience
   this emotion.
5. Where do you feel it in your body? Is it heavy or light? Hot or
   cold? Contained or expansive?
6. Get really curious about what it is like to live inside your body
   with this emotion.
7. You can even say, “Oh so this is what it is like to feel ….”
8. If any thoughts arise, just gently return to the experience of
   feeling the bodily sensations of your feeling.
9. After 90 seconds, take a brief inventory. How are you feeling
   now?
10. Then move on into your day!

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi (translation by Coleman Barks)

Hello friend,
This month for me has been a lesson in acceptance.
Not in an earth shattering way, but in small moments throughout each
day that are slowly dripping into my consciousness.
Acceptance is essential in living life fully, but it is also a loaded word that
can bring up it’s opposite: resistance.
I invite you to pause for a moment here and check-in with the word
acceptance.
What does it mean to you?
Here are some things that often arise:
-Acceptance is passive and prohibits changing what we can.
-Acceptance is weak and all about giving in.
-Acceptance means not getting what you want.
I have grappled with all these same stories about acceptance within
myself. However, last year when I launched my online course and dove
deeper into what acceptance means, this is what I landed on.
I kept bumping into an idea about acceptance as receiving and
witnessing a gift.
Dictionary.com has it’s first definition of acceptance as:
“the act of receiving or taking what is offered”
This is how I’ve been exploring acceptance in my own life. It is a perfect
analogy for me because I struggle with acceptance the same way I
struggle to receive well-meaning gifts from friends and family.
Truth is, I am a terrible gift receiver. I receive gifts warily. I am notorious for
exchanging gifts with receipts or giving them away.
Over the years, I have learned how to assume the face of polite gracious
receiving, but underneath that facade there is a groan around another
thing I don’t need and didn’t ask for.

This is the same response I have towards accepting and receiving the
information around the “way things are”. I am wary, groaning, and
resistant. I often yell internally, “No thank you, I didn’t need or want this in
my life!”.
However, in both these scenarios, with physical gifts and with life’s gifts,
I’ve come to find that this approach brings less joy. Resistance only
increases suffering. It can bring relief in the short-term but never for the
long-haul because life will keep bringing things to our doorstep that we
didn’t ask for.
Plus, in all my resistance to what I receive, I miss out on any surprise or joy
in the act of receiving.
The surprise gift from a friend, no matter the content, also holds the power
to remind me of the connection and love we share. It opens up the
possibility for me to pause and connect with the preciousness of
friendship, the unique qualities this person brings to my life, and the care
and time they spent putting together a gift.
So I could wrap up this analogy and say that the events in our lives offer
the same opportunity.
I could be cliche and say that every dark cloud has a silver lining.
But I won’t, because to me it is only half true.
Life is hard and there aren’t always happy endings or grand triumphs of
the human spirit. Sometimes things are just painful.
While dark moments often hold important lessons and acceptance of life
as it is does generate less suffering, this isn’t the point of practicing
acceptance to me.
Ultimately, receiving our experience through acceptance is about opening
up to life. The gift is aliveness. Life is continually knocking at your door and
you can either choose to run from it hiding under the covers or you can
welcome it in and say hello.
This isn’t easy and doesn’t always feel fun, but it is true, real and ultimately
enlivening because you are open to the flow of life moving through you.
Accepting life just as it is, is a practice.

There isn’t a perfect state of acceptance and while I can see myself
growing in acceptance as I reframe and practice it in my life, I still grapple
with it daily. From accepting the weather outside, to my thought patterns,
to the suffering that appears in my news feed, I am learning to be alive
and notice the life that is being lived in each moment.
What a gift.
Below you’ll find the short practice that I often utilize when I’m grappling
with receiving life. I hope it serves you in moving through resistance and
unearthing the aliveness that is always available to us in every moment.
Here is to the gift of feeling alive!

❤ Jennifer

House of Belonging Exercise

So how do we notice resistance and turn towards acceptance when
life’s gifts arrive in our lives?
Here is a short practice in turning towards life as it is with a
welcoming heart:
Using the metaphor of a guest house from the Rumi poem above,
reflect on these questions:
What thought/emotion will you not allow in your house of
belonging?
(It helps to identify where you think you are falling short in your life
and then notice where you find resistance in your thoughts or
emotions. Alternatively, you can think about a positive attribute that
would be hard to receive a compliment around and see what
resistance comes up)
What does it feel like to experience that thought/emotion?—
describe it in bodily sensations and any other metaphors you
need.
(Where in your body does it live? If it were to show up at your “door”
what would it sound/look/smell like?)
What is the story/reason why you can’t let this thought/emotion
in?
(Reflect on what you would have to feel, experience, believe if this
emotion or thought was allowed?)

Is there a deep desired need at the root of why this thought/
emotion cannot BE?
(Think about universal needs such as belonging, love, safety. Often
when you touch into a deep need you will feel tender, raw, and
open.)
Take a moment to sit with that need—observe how precious it is
to you.
(Explore just being with the thought/emotion that you are working
with and noticing the “gift” of this precious need that you’ve
uncovered).
Notice if there is any action that is inspired by this reflection. If so,
write it down.
If not, know that allowing life to be lived within you is always
enough in and of itself.

“Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to

love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

– Lucille Ball

Dearest Women,
I’m writing to you because I know some of you, despite your own brilliance,
are harder on yourselves than anyone else could possibly be.
Perhaps with the past year of pandemic, social unrest, and uncertainty this
pattern has become even more obvious and it is clear that being hard on
yourself is only adding to your pain.
This is a TRAGEDY.
It is also one that has played out in my own life.
I struggled with feeling like I wasn’t enough for years. I was plagued with
perfectionist goals and overachieving tendencies that left me unhappy
and critical. I sought out all sorts of self-help books/programs/classes
hoping to get to a place of peace and confidence but no matter what I
learned or did I continually felt like I was falling short.
Once I figured out that being so critical of myself was part of the problem I
unfortunately turned that into another reason to be hard on myself,
“Jennifer, why can’t you be kinder to yourself!?”
It was an endless hamster wheel of aiming for perfection and then being
critical of myself for not reaching an unreachable goal.
Some people say that you can’t fully love others until you love yourself!
While I believe this is true, I also know that those of us that are hard on
ourselves have some of the biggest hearts and capacities for care,
empathy, and understanding.
Along my path towards greater self-compassion, I had many “aha
moments” that have led me to where I am today. But one of the biggest is
that we already have the beautiful skills and capacities to love and accept
ourselves fully we just need to know how to turn them towards ourselves.
This was such a relief! I already had well developed skills I just needed to
learn how to direct them in an unfamiliar direction.
This is absolutely true for you too! You already know how to care for others,
deeply listen to them and understand what it is like to be in their shoes!

The learning that is MISSING is how to turn your big heart inward towards
yourself!
Today, I am a different person. I have the tools I need to move through
whatever story I’m stuck in about “not being enough”. I can access my
inner wisdom and show up authentically. I set goals that are reasonable
and I can course correct when I start getting stuck in old patterns. I know
what true confidence feels like and experience peace and satisfaction
regularly.
It is like I have a compass when I head out into the wild woods of the world.
It doesn’t prevent me from getting lost but once I remember I am carrying
my compass I can find my way back home.
I’d love to invite you to join me in my Become Your Own Best Friend course.
If you’ve felt lost in perfectionist fantasies, constantly chasing the approval
of others, or never quite feeling like you are enough then this is the class
(or the COMPASS 😉 for you!,
I’ve designed this course to give you the tools you need to turn your
empathy skills inward. It is a blueprint of the essential skills you need to
move from feeling anxious and not enough to start feeling worthy,
confident, and authentic.
This year I’m offering the class as a self-paced course that includes
seven private 50 minute coaching sessions with me. That way you have
all the support you need to make this a new reality in your life and truly
transform the way you relate to yourself.
So If you are ready to be:
more comfortable in your own skin and deeply grounded in your
own knowing
energized by life and your purpose
confident that you can take consistent action in your life and less
fearful of making mistakes or failing
connected to a steady source of love and support for yourself
…then please check out the course details below or sign up for a free 30
minute call with me. We can chat and see that this is a great fit for both of
us!

Here is the calendar to sign up for a 30 min call:
Become Your Own Best Friend Questions Call
If you are ready to join, sign up here:
Become Your Own Best Friend: Tame Your Inner Critic and Awaken Your
Authentic Self
No matter if you decide the course is right for you at this point, know that I
am cheering you on as you move towards wholeness, wellness, and deep
care for your own beautiful being!
We need all of us embracing our wild, messy, brilliance to make our world
amazing, just, and good!
Hope to see you in class!

❤
Jennifer

*Do you know a woman who might be interested in this class? Please
forward this email onto them. The world needs all of us at our best and
that means being kind to ourselves! Let’s start a “LOVEVOLUTION”! *
;)❤❤❤ 😉