So one of the main points I want to make today is the way you treat yourself.
Ask yourself,
Does this have my best interest at heart?
When you choose to do something,
Don't ask yourself,
Do I want all this pizza right now?
If we ask ourselves,
What do I want in the moment?
It is usually sitting on the couch with pizza and tons of ice cream and not doing anything and like scrolling through all your social media feeds.
That's what we want in the moment.
Ask yourself,
Will my future self thank me for this?
This choice that I'm making now,
Will it help me thrive?
Will my future self thank me for this?
Thriving,
It's not necessarily easy.
It's simple in the sense that you know what those things are,
But it's not easy.
It's exercising and kind of challenging your body.
It's meditating daily.
It's taking courses so that you can grow and improve.
It's putting heart and putting effort and putting concentration into your job.
It's investing in your relationships fully.
That is challenging.
That's not for the lazy,
But I sometimes say happiness is not for the lazy.
If you really want your happiness,
You plan,
You in a sense,
Fight for it.
You do a lot to be in the right state of mind,
State of body and state of heart to be happy.
So one of the main aspects for me is doing anything as an act of self-compassion.
Like you can get up to go to the gym tomorrow and tell yourself,
I'm fat,
I'm lazy,
I've broken all my New Year's resolutions already.
I haven't exercised in ages.
I'm a slow runner.
I'm awful at all exercise.
I feel bad about my body.
Let me go exercise.
You might also say my friend Pamela looks so much better than I do.
She's in better shape.
Negatively comparing yourself to any other person actually looks like physical pain in the brain.
So that is a painful thing to do.
That burns energy that turns on your amygdala.
Your amygdala is the part of the brain that freaks out and uses a lot of your body's resources.
So that's one way you may never even get to the gym.
Maybe you get to the gym,
But you get to the gym with less energy,
Less enthusiasm,
Or you may not get to the gym because you'll be kind of paralyzed and depressed by this thought pattern.
I want to model for you what it would sound like to get to the gym from a place of self-compassion.
So I would say,
Elizabeth,
I know you really want to spread compassion and mindfulness and self-compassion to as many people as possible and make a difference in their lives and bring happiness to as many people as you can.
That takes a lot of inner strength.
That takes a lot of inner resource.
That takes energy.
And for that,
You need a strong,
Flexible body.
So I can feel good so that I can be healthy.
Let me do Pilates or strength training tomorrow morning.
So I get to maintain my good mood and my optimism so that I'm mentally strong and I keep showing up for the people I care about and the work I care about and myself fully.
So as a gift to myself,
Let me have a strong and flexible body.
So the point I want to make here is that you can do the hardest things.
You can grow,
You can learn,
You can change,
You can improve all as an act of self-compassion,
As a gift to yourself.
Or you can do those very same things to punish yourself or to be against yourself.
You get to pick the intention with which you do things.
This is your absolute freedom.
We don't get to pick a lot of the things in our life.
Like we get a difficult brain.
We didn't pick it.
We have a body that we didn't pick.
We can contribute to it and nurture it,
But we didn't pick this body.
We don't pick where we're born.
We don't pick our parents.
You get to pick why you do things and how you do them and with what intention.
And that makes all the difference.
