Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Kelly here.

And today we are going to talk a little bit more about self-compassion.

But we're going to focus in on another aspect of self-compassion, which is self-kindness. And I'm a huge fan of the word

kind. I always tell people what I'm looking for in a friend or in a partner is that they're not

nice, but that they're kind. And I personally make the distinction that a nice person says great things,

maybe positive, they may do a couple things for you,

and they certainly don't go out of the way to harm you.

But a kind person engages in action.

They are actively demonstrating their kindness to you.

And so let's talk about how to develop some kindness for ourselves.

I mentioned before that the leading kind of theorist on self-compassion is Dr.

Kristen Neff.

And we talked about before that she talks about the pillars of self-compassion. I want to focus in on self-kindness because I think it's the one

thing that we as black women don't get enough of. And self-kindness is about showing and understanding and a

kindness to ourselves when we make mistakes or when we're hurt, when we fail at something,

that we cultivate a practice of not being critical or harsh, especially when we're already feeling pain, but that we treat

ourselves with warmth and patience. I want you to sit with that. When's the last time you

treated yourself with warmth or with patience?

Well, are you constantly forcing yourself to do things, pushing, pulling yourself out of bed,

going through a life of just absolute force instead of ease, instead of warmth and kindness?

We all know what it feels like to be warm or engage with somebody with warmth, how that makes us feel inside.

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