This content was created by Susan Britton MCC. This content was uploaded by Susan Britton MCC. This is a YouTube video titled "Friday Encouragement: Are you grateful for you?" (created 2020-11-20). It is a short, solo encouragement/reflection by Susan Britton MCC focused on self-compassion and cultivating gratitude for oneself around Thanksgiving. Susan references Kristin Neff's seven-day self-compassion writing study, recommends a simple two-part formula for writing daily self-gratitude letters (addressing yourself, naming an attribute and its positive impact), and reads an example she wrote to herself. The piece is instructional and motivational, inviting viewers to try a seven-day self-gratitude practice.
Chapters
Hey, it's Susan. We're heading into the Thanksgiving weekend, and of course everybody thinks about things that you're grateful for during that time. And if you're like me, I know it's really easy to go straight to being grateful for the relationships and the people in our lives. And so I think about loved ones and family members and the colleagues and the coaches that I get to work with. And then I also think about how easy it is to think about the work that I get to do and how grateful I am for that, to get up in the morning and think about brain-based coaching things. So lots to be grateful for. But as I was going through the list of things to be grateful for, what I noticed is that I have a harder time being grateful for myself. And I don't know if you might experience that just a little bit. Like, it's easy to be grateful for the external people in our world and And I thought, that's not very self-compassionate. And that is also one of the things that I'm fascinated by and like to study. So I think about Kristin Neff at UT Austin, who's done a number of compassion studies. And one of the studies that she's done showed where a control group for 7 days in a row wrote about past experiences, and then her other group actually wrote 7 days in a row a self-compassion letter to themselves. And so I thought, what a neat thing to do is to try that, especially as we're going into Thanksgiving, and take 7 days and write about something you're grateful for about yourself. And you can do a real simple formula. It could be like, dear me, I'm super grateful for— and then label maybe some attribute, some aspect of your personality, something that you know, some expertise that you have. And then the second part of that formula is the impact that it has on you and on other people and your ability to be successful in the world. So I started out and I thought, okay, I'm going to take my own medicine. I'm going to try this. And so I wrote a little something to look at it here. So it's, dear Susan, dear me, I love the way that you so easily see the good in circumstances, especially this past year with COVID and how difficult that's been for a lot of people. So even when those circumstances look daunting, you still have an ability to both acknowledge what you're feeling and move through it with curiosity and perseverance. And I love that about me. So simple as that. Write it out, say it out loud, feel it with gratitude, and see what kind of residuals you might get in doing so. Light and love to you.
