...So if you are somebody who can relate to this dynamic of guilt showing up pretty often for you in your thought narrative, I want to encourage you to get real curious about how it shows up for you, when it shows up for you, what the message is, and if it is something that helps you get back on track with the way you want to live, great. Listen to it, pay attention. If there's something with your morals or something that's dangerous and risky and really not how you want to live, then guilt can be really, really helpful.

But if you are somebody that this is a common dynamic for in terms of your thoughts and your thought patterns—just as you go about your daily life and as you shift from tending to one task and one person and one responsibility to the next, then let's really start to challenge that guilt narrative. Is it motivating you? Is it helpful? Is it encouraging?…

Some of us are more likely to admit that we have limits and are fairly in tune with naming those limits, and others of us are not and continue to hold up perhaps an unrealistic standard of what we feel like we should be or should be accomplishing or our capacity in a way that doesn't match our reality. And that can be a continual source of frustration, it can be a source of disappointment, and it can also really move into being more of a source of shame if the inner critic is so harsh.

So if the narrative in your mind is accusatory, is condemning, is harsh, is extremely critical, that's more of that self-judgment. It's not really helpful. And it takes something that's already hard, the event itself or the emotion itself or the circumstance, and it makes it so much harder because of the state it can kind of bring a person into when whereas self-compassion through self kindness is going to be more graceful, more forgiving, and it doesn't mean that you have to justify everything as no big deal…There still can be a true admittance of “I made a mistake or I didn't handle that in a way that I value or the way that I want.” But the message, the narrative is more about kindness, forgiveness, grace, and kind of a new day mindset…it's less all or nothing. All is not lost. And so it encourages someone to keep, keep striving and keep going and not lose hope.