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everyday compassion
(365 days of ordinary kindness)
Pre-order to receive your copy September 2026
A space to settle in and listen, and see where the episode takes you. This inspiring, reflective podcast is an invitation to travel deeper, with compassionate self-enquiry.
Henny shares insights from her own life, alongside practices that help us connect with our inner wisdom, explore our relationship with change and find a greater sense of flow. Henny believes we all hold our own answers, so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions here. This is a space to be with what’s true for you, and to grow from there.
If you’re drawn to slowing down, listening in, and exploring what it means to live with greater authenticity, this podcast is for you. Guided by psychology, mindfulness, therapeutic coaching, flow journaling, and everyday compassion, we explore ideas that help us step further into our inner worlds, in order to shape the changes we seek in our outer worlds.
So today we are turning toward the inner critic. That part of us that can so often feel like it is our worst enemy and yet is like all of our parts just trying to do the job that it thinks it is here to do. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self awareness with profound self compassion. I'm Henny. I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self love.
Henny Flynn:Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. So that idea of the inner critic being here to do a job, do a job that it thinks it's here to do, that we're able to turn toward it with kindness and with compassion, it can seem so counterintuitive. And you know and it can seem ridiculous at times with some of the voices or the words that might be inside us and some of the things that we say to ourselves, some of the ways in which we put ourselves down or limit ourselves or ridicule ourselves and yet and yet if we hold the premise that there are no bad parts, which is also the title of a fantastic book by Richard Schwartz. If we hold this premise that there are no bad parts, then we can step back from the inner critic and have a look and go okay well if there are no bad parts and you're a part of me then maybe you too are not bad and then that makes me ask the question what is good what is bad you know fundamentally when we think about parts we're looking at you know, these ways of being in the world that these parts have learned somewhere along the line, maybe when we were very, very young.
Henny Flynn:And, you know they've grown to understand that this is a job that they're here to perform and perhaps what they don't yet know is that there is more than one way to keep someone safe there's more than one way to stop someone making a fool of themselves there's more than one way to correct a mistake and often that's really what the inner critic is actually seeking to do for us. I've sort of dived in here about the inner critic because this is the aspect of resilience that I'd really love to talk to today. If you've been following the podcast for the last few weeks, you'll know that resilience has been a theme that has been running through so much of what we've been talking about. And also in the conversation with Adam Lind last week I heard myself say to Adam oh you know resilience and boundaries I think that they are like are so interesting for me personally. They're something that I return to again and again and I think it's because they are really sort of fundamental aspects of compassion of how we express compassion toward ourselves and therefore how we're able to express compassion toward others.
Henny Flynn:In correlation with this idea of the inner critic, I think that's very interesting. So I'm just going to read to you something that I shared in I think it was the episode about three weeks ago where I was talking about you know resilience can can appear in many different forms and there were three key themes that came out of that and this one about the inner critic is the third and final theme that I'd like to unpack a little bit more a little bit more detail really or a bit more expansiveness. I love that word and so let me just read to you what it was that I said in that episode that sparked this episode here. So, if you're worried that you need to be more resilient or that you shouldn't be feeling so tired despite the energy grief or worry is taking from you or if there's a voice telling you that you need to buck up remember listen to it all with kindly listen to it all kindly and let it know you understand this drive to get on and that you won't always feel this way. Hold the tiredness, the sadness, the worry with compassion and remember this too shall pass.
Henny Flynn:There's a reason those words have clung in our collective consciousness. They hold undeniable truth. So these behaviors and patterns and beliefs can change if that is what you would like them to do. And like everything in life, it is a process. It's not something that needs to be rushed at or ignored, simply faced with kindness and curiosity and calm.
Henny Flynn:So I'd love to just, take some of the concepts from that, short piece and just sit with them a while and see how does that relate to resilience what's going on there I mean in essence what I'm talking about is that often we'll have this strong inner feeling maybe that we're not resilient enough. Know it's something that I often hear actually from clients. They might come to me with this maybe with perhaps a belief that in some way they're broken or in some way they need fixing, because there may be a story that they've absorbed from somewhere along the line, maybe from someone that they've loved, or maybe from society, or maybe from, you know, sitting on social media and looking at other people's lives, that in some way their own response to the world doesn't quite measure up, and that can lead to a sense that we're not resilient enough. So then when there is this kind of very natural drop in resilience because we're exhausted or because there's an awful lot on our plate or because we haven't been filling up our self care bank that we then sort of move away from being resilient and move into being deeply critical of ourselves.
Henny Flynn:The challenge with that of course is that that then leads to a loss of resilience. It can lead to us becoming brittle, maybe snapping at people because we feel bad inside ourselves in some way and we externalise that in our behaviours with others or maybe it leads to us feeling you know so kind of overwhelmed and in a polyvagal sense you know maybe coming down into that dorsal place of collapse where it's just like oh it's just all too much and I just can't do it anymore. And then the cycle can begin there as well, we then criticize ourselves or we have an internalized voice that tells us we're lazy and laziness of course is not resilience and so you know gosh it can all get so messy and noisy and really you know what I'm saying here, know what I feel really strongly is that when we can turn toward those voices that might be criticizing ourselves for, you know, how we're feeling, the energy levels that we have, or the resourcefulness that we have available to us, or the kind of emotional weight that we feel like we're carrying, when we can turn toward those things those experiences those voices with kindness and say oh gosh yes well that sounds like a lot that feels like a lot that I'm carrying so no wonder I'm feeling tired or no wonder I'm feeling emotionally depleted no wonder my social battery is low when we can turn toward it with that care I love this phrase actually dispassionate compassion that's a phrase that I often use within myself you know, this sense of being able to really observe, oh yes, this is hard, this is hard.
Henny Flynn:I'm looking at the data, this is hard, I'm not making this up, You're not making this up my darling. And to be sort of dispassionately compassionate in the sense that it's not about then, oh you know sort of going into that kind of letting ourselves off the hook type story which is you know something that people who accuse other people of not being resilient enough can sometimes use language like that and we might use that toward ourselves. You know it's not sort of saying oh just just give in to everything it's not that it's about saying oh here is the reality of what I am experiencing How can I be with that in its entirety, its fullness? How can I hold myself safe and steady in the enormity of what I'm experiencing, the truth of what I'm experiencing? And what are the steps that I can take to shift this state if that's what I wish to do what are the steps that I can take to take another step forward because really at its heart that is what resilience is about.
Henny Flynn:I think again in that conversation with Adam, something he asked me like, what is my definition of resilience? It's one of those moments where I was thinking, oh gosh, I really wish I'd thought about this! Then I thought oh no, I'm really glad I didn't think about this, because what came up felt really true. I'm paraphrasing myself here, but for me resilience is having sort of courage and the compassion to show up for ourselves. And I think ultimately that really is, you know, what I'm talking about here is having the courage and the compassion to turn toward the inner critic, or the doubting Thomas that might be inside us, or you know, however we might label these parts, or might have learnt to label these parts, and to turn toward them with love, and actually learn to understand that those labels might not actually be that accurate.
Henny Flynn:You know, a long time I've been really curious about this phrase the inner critic and using it today because it's useful shorthand, but I don't really think that that is what it is. I don't really think I have an inner critic. What I have is parts who are desperately trying to keep me safe in the world and so some of the things that they say to me might not feel that useful in the moment because they feel like they in response to those words I might feel small, might feel like oh I'm not good enough, I might feel like I'm too much, I might feel like I haven't done enough, I might feel like I'm not capable enough and then when I give that a bit of space and I just step back and I'm literally like, oh I just step back and give myself a breath, then I can see oh okay I feel like this is an old pattern this is an old voice that's been you know telling me this stuff for a long time and you know in the past I might have ignored it, suppressed it, tried to get it to shut up or to go away, but now if I can turn toward it and just say, what is it my love?
Henny Flynn:Like what's the thing that you're most afraid of? And so often what it comes down to, that thing is it's trying to keep me safe. It's trying to protect me in some way. It doesn't want me to look foolish. It's worried that something that happened at school might get repeated, and I might feel pain or loss or feel as though I've been shut out of a social group, you know, it's these parts, you know, they're often quite young, they're often formed when we were young, and so their experience of the world might have got a bit stuck in some of those experiences that we had when we were very young, and they might not have realised that we've actually got all of these other resources available to us now.
Henny Flynn:All of these other resources, which actually lend themselves to our true resilience, and often you know when we're doing parts work, when I'm working one to one with a client, you know, of the questions that I might ask is, you know, how old does this part believe you are? And it's astonishing how quickly the answer comes, because you know, if you haven't done parts work, it might sound a little bit wild like what on earth what is she talking about how can you talk to a part of yourself but the truth of it is that you can it's a really beautiful beautiful thing and you know when we're in that place working with the parts, it's astonishing how fast the answer comes about like how long have you been doing this for? Or how old do you think I am? And often how long have you been doing this for? Forever.
Henny Flynn:How old do you think I am? Eight, five, 11, whenever the incident occurred that formed that part, that brought that part into being. And so that part might be holding its view of the world based on that experience, that incredibly difficult or challenging or complex or painful or lonely experience. And so then all it wants to do is keep you safe from that happening again. And if we've learned, maybe through the language and the actions of our caregivers, that love can look like criticism, then that can be a reason why those parts adopt those tones of voice, those words, because they don't know any better.
Henny Flynn:They don't know that it can be different. They don't know how to speak with love, and so in this parts where we can start to teach these parts what love sounds like, and we do it by modelling it, by turning toward them and speaking with love. And that is what I mean when I say that, you know, as with everything in life, it's a process, because you can't just wave a magic wand and say, I'm now going to only ever be lovely to myself and that means that I'm always going to be self regulated emotionally and I'm always going to be present, I'm always gonna be calm, I'm always going to be kind, you know, it's not possible. It's literally not possible, and again, I want to reference the conversation that Adam and I had, because he talked about how he had recognized that he'd pedestaled me. He'd put me on this pedestal, because when we first met, he got this idea of who I am, and what I'm like.
Henny Flynn:And then as he got to know me and we became friends after we had worked together, he was my client for a while, then there was our social group sort of coalesced and we became friends, and you know, we have very clear boundaries around that. It's all good and healthy, that relationship. But he recognised that he had pedestaled me, and so then when he saw me as a real person, which of course I am, it was difficult for him. And now I've completely lost my train of thought. This is the third episode where that's happened.
Henny Flynn:Anyway, hopefully when we listen back, we can see the point I was trying to make there. Just sort of going back to this idea that, you know, we can turn toward ourselves with kindness and calm, and actually back to that pedestalling thing, in a way we can stop pedestalling ourselves. So, if we if we always hold ourselves up to this very high standard, I. E. We sit ourselves on a pedestal, it is really hard to practice compassion toward ourselves, because we set these really high expectations.
Henny Flynn:Whereas if we stand rooted in the ground, feet firmly in the ground, barefooted in the grass, feeling the earth beneath our toes, and that connection with the mother earth beneath us, then it is so much easier to see ourselves as the human that we are, and to recognize that we are perfectly imperfect, just as we are. And again, that doesn't mean that we go, ah, like never mind, I've made loads of mistakes, I'm horrible to people, I hurt people, that's all okay, I'm just human, I'm just human. We're not doing that, of course we're not doing that. What we're doing is, we're saying, oh I recognize that I am human, and I recognize that with this compassionate self inquiry, with this attention to what I notice about myself, and the way that I am in the world, then I am able to grow and to feel the way that I wish to feel. You know, to live the life that I really wish to live in a way that feels most true for me.
Henny Flynn:And, you know, I think underneath it all, ultimately, what we're all looking for is love and connection and belonging. And you know, when we can treat ourselves with that same love, connection and belonging, then it becomes much easier to find it in our experience in the outer world too. So, all of this whole reflection really is threaded with resilience, you know. I think this is that point I was making before, that resilience shows up in many ways, and I think being in the world with love right now is possibly the most resilient thing that we could possibly do, to be able to stand in the face of complexity and bizarre, bizarre unfoldings in the political world around us, regardless of what your political stance is. I think all of us kind of have this sense of this kind of dichotomy, this sort of binary kind of thinking that we keep getting pulled into.
Henny Flynn:It's clickbait for news channels and social media, and when we can stand in the midst of that maelstrom with love, if we are able to stand in the midst of that maelstrom with love, gosh, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? And for me, I think that's what resilience is really about. It's like moving toward being able to do that and recognising how hard it is, and recognising that if we can at least begin with turning toward those voices within us with love, You know, maybe stopping using phrases like the inner critic, maybe just considering them as parts of us, who are trying to do their best with the resources that they have available at hand, and that our work then can become parenting those parts, parenting ourselves in such a way that we are able to show up in the world with resilience and love. Gosh, that felt good. I didn't know where this episode was going to take us, but it took us there.
Henny Flynn:You know, this thing, like this stuff is work. It's work for all of us, you know. I am not saying that I've got, oh, you know, here's the answer. It's absolutely not that, but really just being able to sit at the edge of things and say, well, what if this could be a little bit different here? No small shifts that we can make and actually that sort of leads us on to this whole concept of everyday compassion.
Henny Flynn:So, maybe you are one of the many 100 people who've signed up and receive Everyday Compassion in your inbox each week. I mean, it's a slight misnomer to be honest, because the actual email that people get goes once a week. It used to go twice, before that it went three times, and then I just It felt right that it goes once a week now anyway. I'm trusting that, But the concept is it's everyday compassion as in it's something that we can show ourselves and maybe the world around us every day. It's ordinary, it's usual, it's normal, it's simple, it's not a big complex thing, and so those everyday compassion emails, you know, they are easy to read.
Henny Flynn:They are gentle little nuggets of joy and wisdom connection and maybe a little bit of like wry humour, and you know the best way that I can describe them is tiny notes filled with love, and this is breaking news, because if you don't already get those emails, then this will be brand new news for you, because I have already told the people who get those emails, because I wanted them to know first, that Everyday Compassion has become a book. It's become a book of three sixty five days of ordinary kindness. So this whole concept of everyday compassion means that you can pick this book up, it's at your fingertips, you can find today's date, and you can read what is there on the page, or you can do what someone else is telling me, I have some advanced copies and someone was saying to me that they had been picking it up and opening it at random, just on any date, and just seeing what the message was. So, you can use it in whatever way feels most true for you, but it's like almost like a sort of daily devotional type book, or a daily contemplative type book, something that just gives you a moment in your day to pause, a moment to offer yourself some everyday compassion.
Henny Flynn:And I am so excited about this. I love all of the books that I've written. I think it's okay to say that, of course, I love them, because otherwise why would I have put them out in the world? And this one feels so special, and the fact that it is so full of all of these beautiful nuggets of wisdom and joy, that have landed in me. I don't say that I've written them, but they've definitely landed in me over the past couple of years.
Henny Flynn:Then to be able to gather them all together in this way, it's such a beautiful book to hold as well. It's very simple and very easy on the eye, very easy in the hands, and to be able to share that out into the world fills me with so much joy. And the book itself is going to be published in September this year, so it is now available for pre orders. Pre orders are so important for all the publishing industry, but I think they're particularly important for self published books, because it's with that support that it makes the book become possible. So, I invite you to take a look at the link in the show notes.
Henny Flynn:I really hope you love what you see. I really hope it inspires you to pre order a copy for yourself or maybe for someone that you love, and when you pre order you'll also be sent a little gift of a set of postcards that come from using quotes from Everyday Compassion, but also from My Darling Girl and also from that lovely other little book that I have All the Ways I Tell Myself I Love You. So, these postcards you'll get a little set and then you can use those to send to people that you love, and that's my gift to you for helping bring this book Everyday Compassion into the world. So, I would be beyond grateful, and of course, if it doesn't call you, that's okay too. You know, these things, like, they have to be right for us, but I really hope that you take a moment to have a look and of course if you've got any questions or if you would love me to send the copy to someone that you love, and you'd like a message put into the book, then I will do that too, just for the pre orders.
Henny Flynn:So, There we go, there we go it feels really good to have shared that because it's such a big thing when we create something and that moment of putting it out into the world so there we go that's what I'm doing all right my darlings thank you so much for listening and this is the end of this season of the podcast. I think we'll probably be back in September because there isn't really enough time to run a whole other season before I head off on my autumn my August break but I might do some cheeky little bonus episodes you never know that could well happen. I have a feeling it is going to happen in fact I might even turn up next week who knows? Anyway, I'm sending you so much love and a hug and a wave.