Stop Beating Yourself Up and Listen to This | Kristin Neff

**Kristin Neff** (0:00)
There are two faces of self-compassion, which I call the fierce and the tender. Tender self-compassion is like maybe, you know, a partnership called maternal energy, which is all about soothing, comforting.
It's okay that you made a mistake, you know, I'm here for you, I love you unconditionally. But there's also what I like to call mama bear self-compassion, which is like, no, you gotta do something different. Like this behavior or this situation is not healthy. You need to make a change, you need to try harder, you need to do, you know, kind of, that's like the motivating coach energy.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

**Chip Conley** (0:46)
Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis, this is Chip Conley, and I'm going to do my best at being self-compassionate today because I learned a lot on this particular episode with Dr. Kristin Neff, the world's leading expert on self-compassion. Now, I have to admit that there's a part of me that feels like, well, self-compassion doesn't push me forward. It just means that I'm going to be couch potato and do Netflix and chill. But in reading Kristin's work, but also in, and she's got, I think five books, many of them bestsellers.
But also in talking to her in this episode, what I got really clear on is that self-talk actually can be very positive for your performance. And if you are constantly beating yourself up, then it actually wears you down and you get performance anxiety. So this episode is with the woman, the academic who has helped to spawn 10,000 studies in academia on self-compassion. She obviously hasn't done them all herself, but the work that she did starting 23 years ago has led to this whole new area of psychology. I think you're gonna find this to be particularly helpful if you're someone who feels as if being self-critical is what will make you a better person, which is what a lot of us feel. And by midlife, you shouldn't feel that anymore. All right, let's enjoy the episode and I'll be back at the end with my three key lessons.
Dr. Kristin Neff, thank you so much for joining us on The Midlife Chrysalis.

**Kristin Neff** (2:19)
Well, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah.

**Chip Conley** (2:22)
So you are maybe the world's foremost expert on the topic of self-compassion. I want to sort of understand and unpack your history.
How did this come to be? Were you someone who is always self-compassionate or did you have a self-critical side to you that led you to ultimately discovering, through studying Buddhism, the idea of self-compassion?

**Kristin Neff** (2:46)
Yes, so I think I was an average self-critic. Actually, most people are by nature my evolution self-critical.
So what had happened was I was going through a really stressful time in my life. It was in the late 90s and I had gotten married young and divorced young. So I was feeling like an utter failure in my marriage. It was not the plan I had in store for me. I was also feeling a lot of stress because I was about to finish up my PhD, at University of California at Berkeley. There was no prospect of a job inside at that point. It's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be overqualified. What am I going to do? So I was basically a mess, you might say.
I had heard-

**Chip Conley** (3:30)
How old were you at that time?

**Kristin Neff** (3:31)
I would have been almost 30 at that time. Okay. I had heard that mindfulness meditation was supposed to be good for stress, and I was under a lot of stress and feeling badly. So fortunately for me, I learned mindfulness meditation in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a beautiful Zen master recently passed, who always talked a lot about the importance of turning compassion inward as well as outward. So even though I took the course to learn mindfulness meditation, I remember that took me a while to figure out how to do that. The very first night I took this course, a woman leading the class said, it's really important to give yourself compassion if you're going through a stressful time or you're feeling badly about yourself.
It had never even occurred to me before. It's funny. It's like I had never even considered the fact that I could give myself compassion. I thought that was something you gave to other people or that they give to you. So I remember that night I went home and I tried it. I was like, okay, Kristin, yes, you're feeling badly about your failed marriage. Well, you aren't the only one. It happens. You did your best. And I kind of talked to myself like I would talk to a friend and about the stress of the job. You know, well, something will work out. And it was weird. It sounded strange, but I said things like, I'll be here for you.