Hello and welcome back to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday. It's Eve here. So the title

of today's episode is Look How Far You've Come. My inspiration for this came from when

I had to fill out a performance review recently. As part of the review process we are given a

section at the end to provide an overall summary of our performance. And after about 20 minutes

of writing I paused to read what I'd written and I was pretty surprised at how critical

and judgmental I was being about myself. It was a personal attack on me by me. My first

thought was wow would you ever write like that about someone else? And my answer was no. So I

step back. I did a short breathing exercise to refocus my mind. In fact let's do one together now

so I can show you that sometimes all we need is a little room and permission to pause.

Wherever you are inviting you to take a slow deep breath in and then gently breathing out.

Focusing your attention on your breathing one more time a deep breath in through the nose.

And then out through the mouth. So exercises like this and why go to when I'm feeling

particularly overwhelmed or I feel mentally blocked. And it was in giving myself a little space

that it gave me some room to take a different approach. Rather than writing a personal

attack on myself. I wrote as if I were describing the work that my good friend and coworker

Eve had delivered. The language I used was far more open and less judgmental. This didn't

mean that I ignored some key learnings or areas where I could recognize that improvements

could be made. But rather I framed it in a way that didn't feel so personal. And I'll just

read you the opening paragraph. Dear Eve, it's been amazing to see how your work has impacted

so many lives. But I know what you're like. You tend to focus on things you didn't do or what

you could or should have done better. But you should feel proud of yourself. This year has been

incredibly tough for you. And over the past couple of years you've told me to be gentle with myself.

...