Gas yourself up

What does immense self-kindness look like?

Studio views, fabric collage wip

My friend, Jess, sent me a video this morning. A therapist talking about self-talk. The sum of it? At least for me?

Gas yourself up.

It’s was neurosceince-y and that’s the shit I like. I’m fascinated by humans, by our brains. Help me understand me. Help me understand us. Why do we get stuck? Why do we do what we do? I wanna know.

And basically this guy was saying how the human nervous system doesn’t know the difference between real threat in the world (like say, coming across a bear on a hike) and the self-defeating, critical, scary stuff we tell ourselves (like you’re gross - one of my personal greatest hits).

Yikes. I’m 100% the hardest person on myself. As the kids say, it me. I’m almost never good enough for me. Full of self-awareness and self-doubt. But also confident somehow? It’s confusing to be me.

I blame it mostly on the culture I grew up in in the Bay Area. You know the tech boom? I grew up in the middle of it. Right down the street from the garage Apple computers was invented in. Right across the way from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and literally any internet giant you can call to mind.

The baseline existence of the Bay in the 90s when I was growing up? Success. Wild success. Everything else was failure.

The message I got? Don’t do a thing unless you can do it successfully.

This has massively contributed to two things in my life: 1) an insatiable search for the thing that will finally make me feel proud and 2) a total lack of pride in myself. Full disclosure? I’m not sure pride is a feeling I’ve ever felt. Sure, I’ve felt proud of others. I’m proud of you is a thing I know.

I’m proud of me? I don’t know that one.

And I’ve done a lot to be proud of. Intellectually, I can see that. But seeing isn’t always believing. Those messages we get as kids ring louder than almost anything else.

So what to do?

The hell if I know. But, like I told Jess, I’m declaring this the year of gassing myself up. Gen Z knows what I’m talking about. There’s even an app for that. Or there was. Actually the app was about gassing others up. That’s important, too, of course.

This therapist also said that the biggest catalyst for change is immense self-warmth and self-kindness. Ugh. I hate to hear it! And I’m also very interested in trying it!

Already I’d made a big (too big??) goal for myself this year to physically feel better. It’s been a goal of mine for years. Chronic migraine will do that to a person.

In my mind, feeling better means being intentional about what I put in my body, exercise, sleep, what people I surround myself with, what kind of work I take on, etc.. But maybe before any of that, I need to think about about just being kind to myself.

Period.

What does immense self-kindness look like? And how can I get more of it?

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Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.

—mooji

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What you hope, you will eventually believe. What you believe, you will eventually know. What you know, you will eventually create. What you create, you will eventually experience. What you experience, you will eventually express. What you express, you will eventually become.

—Neale Donald Walsch

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SEE ART

Excited to support some friends this Friday for the opening of Digital Pop: Moving Lightly @ Ojai Valley Museum 5-7pm. See you there!

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BUY ART

The bottom pieces pictured here are for sale. These are original, handmade, analog collages, professionally framed in museum glass and ready to hang! Happy to provide dimensions and details and to ship/deliver. If you love them (one of them?), I want you to have them. Let’s make it happen.

L: ‘Beauty Inside and Out’, 2022

R: ‘Untitled’, 2022

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May we have the courage to know ourselves and gas ourselves up. I mean ALL THE WAY UP!

Jump + Pray,

Joce

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