In a past life, I designated holidays for my periods of self care.  I would find myself sprinting towards those long weekends and forced weeks off. These weeks of solace would balance those freelance gigs of exhaustive pavement pounding.  I’m a little wiser these days, and I’ve found that stability between feeding my monetary and creative needs.  But I still find myself feeling at odds, with, well…my feelings.  These feelings are ultimately everything that propel and block me.  So when I stumbled upon these words by Alain de Botton, put into animation by animator Joe Bichard for The School of Life, I felt the big hug I needed.  You can read more about Joe’s process in making it here.

So if you are feeling feelings, check out this little exercise in self compassion and make some time for it.  I just took a nap and made a cup of tea and it was exactly what I needed.

A Self Compassion Exercise from Joe Bichard on Vimeo.