You already know how to work hard and think hard. Maybe it's time to balance things out with a bit of light, spacious touch. 

A felt sense of being seen, accepted and lovingly held just as we are is the core of our deepest human longing. 

The more familiar we become with our internal landscape of sensations and feelings swirling through our bodies from moment to moment, the more trusting we become of ourselves over time. 

No need to reinvent the wheel each time you feel stuck in an unhelpful loop. Go back to the wisdom you already know as Truth in your bones. 

When we tune in closely enough, we notice that our hearts are touched by suffering in a way that naturally leans us toward alleviating pain — within ourselves or others. 

The more embodied we become, the more comfortable we feel inside our own skin, regardless of external circumstance. 

You're human, and things just feel bad sometimes for us humans. That's OK. You're allowed your full humanness. 

When you notice you’re entering lid-flipped territory there’s only one thing you need to remember to try to do: Get yourself grounded enough to be able to see and think clearly again (aka close your “flipped lid” back down).

Yes, there absolutely is a warm, soft side to self-compassion. But there's also a fierce side to it. This side has the flavor of “I love you too much to let you wriggle your way out of owning responsibility for harm you may have caused, intentionally or otherwise.” 

How lightly can you go about the “work” of your day today? 

Striving for balance often stirs up dust of guilt, shame and overwhelm, freezing us in our tracks before we’ve been able to get any real positive momentum rolling.

Harmony, on the other hand, feels like a homecoming. Like a return to a restful center point within ourselves. Harmony feels easeful and simple. Pleasant and natural.

These human brains love certainty. Certainty feels safe from a survival perspective, and "figuring things out" is one way our brain grasps after that certainty. 

So it takes some intentionality to pause, zoom out and ask: “Is figuring out why this is happening the most useful way to use my focus and energy right now?”

You staying as regulated, centered and grounded as possible right now matters. You serving as a model of equanimity and thoughtfulness for those around you who are feeling overwhelmed matters. The positive reverberations from you spending a joyful shared moment studying a butterfly with a five-year-old matter. 

In this moment when so much feels out of our control on the global scale, one thing that is within our immediate individual control — and which can have a profound positive ripple effect — is for each of us to do what we can to stay as calm, centered and grounded as possible as we take in information about what’s going on in the world.

The truth is we really can never know in the moment what ripple effects something happening right now – personally or collectively – will have into the future. Something that appears on the surface like bad luck right now could prove to be the biggest blessing as our path unfolds.

We notice that instead of descending into the depths of despair for long periods of time, we still scrape the bottom sometimes, but we’re better able to feel our emotions, process and grieve when that’s what’s called for, and bounce back to our homeostatic set-point and center more quickly and more easily than we used to. 

Yes, once we internally accept whatever's happening in a given moment we no longer need our external situation to change in order to feel OK, content or at peace. 

But we don't usually arrive into that space of acceptance without first going through some layers of resistance and grief. 

No matter which season you’re in, you can trust that no matter how much your mind may believe to the contrary, something new will always emerge in the space where something “old” has faded away. 

When we reassure our mind that this pain will pass, it can relax a bit. 

Shame sends such strong unpleasant internal signals through our body that we’ll send the “inappropriate” or “unacceptable” parts of us underground in order to ensure we stay as belong-able and lovable as possible. Which is why “It’s OK” is a shame antidote.