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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.
I'm meant to be ready. I'm meant to be ready? I'm meant to be getting ready to go out. That was an interesting Freudian slip wasn't it? I'm meant to already be ready to go out tonight.
Henny Flynn:We are going to go and listen to the music of Prince in a candle lit cathedral. That sounds lovely doesn't it? And just before going and doing that with some dear friends I wanted to come here and to share some reflections for this weekend's episode of the podcast and let's see where they take us. Welcome to the Henny Flynn Podcast, the space for deepening self awareness with profound self compassion. I'm Henny.
Henny Flynn: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. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. So there's something about that language of I'm meant to be or I should be or I ought to be getting ready. There's a little hint of self criticism in there, a bit of judgment about oh you know I should have done that already and it speaks to a topic that I talked about recently in, one of my insight timer sessions. So these are free sessions, I tend to hold them on a Monday at 03:00.
Henny Flynn:I know that's a little bit random, but it's really interesting to see how many people join from all around the world and we talk about topics that arise through the group and this one was about self care and the thing that sort of, that we covered in this particular session was about how our self talk is such a vital part of our self care and how that inner narrative reflects how we see ourselves and it has a ripple effect on how we expect to be seen by others and it felt that, you know, maybe this is something that we can all individually pay some attention to and of course this isn't about never challenging ourselves, or about always thinking that everything that we do is okay, you know, we are seeing something unfold around us right now, which is a demonstration of what happens when we don't listen to our inner wise kind voice and yeah it's that's slightly distracting thought really because gosh the stuff that's unfolding around us right now it's, it's big and it's heavy but I think there is something very distinct about this practice of self compassion and the way that we talk to ourselves with self compassion that is very different from always condoning our own behaviour at all times, never seeing that there could ever be anything wrong in something that we do.
Henny Flynn:This what I'm really talking about here is about being able to see our whole self with compassion and using what we witness and using our experiences to support our evolution and our growth. So, in, you know, a sort of few thoughts around this is that, you know, one aspect of our self talk being part of our self care is about allowing ourselves to make mistakes and to learn from them. So, for me, I am being very mindful of the time and making sure that I am going to have enough time to get ready to go meet my friends to go and do this lovely evening together, so that I don't either end up rushing here or rushing on my way to them. So, you know my experience of learning from mistakes teaches me that that is going to be the best outcome in all situations and so you know being able to see where we have learnt something and then to keep remembering that we've learnt it and to keep moving forward with that learning. It's such a simple example, but you know we can extrapolate from these examples into other parts of our lives too and another aspect of how self talk can be part of how we self care can be recognising where some of the voices, some of those inner voices that we have within us, that we all have within us, you know, where do they come from?
Henny Flynn:Are they from a caregiver or a teacher or an old boss or a family member or someone from our friendship group or our social setting? You know, whose voice is it that we're hearing when we're being very critical to ourselves? Is it really how we in our deepest, wisest, kindest self would really love to speak to ourselves or is it something that we've adopted, inherited, been handed by somebody else, some powerful other in our life and I say powerful other because when we're children everyone around us is more powerful than we are. We can also remember here that we may have learnt a language of love that uses criticism rather than compassion, perhaps that's because that was the language that our caregiver learned or was taught. You know, often the language of love that comes out as criticism can be sort of being told off before we've done something and sometimes that happens because the caregiver, wants to keep us safe they've had a bad experience themselves in the past and so they're very quick to step in and chastise us before something happens because actually sitting underneath that criticism is a desire to care for us and to keep us safe and the only way they know how to do that is to use criticism or judgment or harsh words.
Henny Flynn:Now, you know, sometimes when we recognise that, it can be really important to also bring our non judgment to what we see, maybe to be able to hold the person who, you know, use that kind of language in our younger years to be able to hold them with our compassion even as we're recognising the impact that it may have had on us and the way that we grew up and the stories and internal habits of how we speak to ourselves, how they were then developed and embedded and of course when we speak about holding others with compassion, we're not saying and passively allow them to say or do whatever we are saying instead, that we see them as the human that they are, but it doesn't mean that we have to condone their behaviours and once again actually I'm mindful of some of the things that we're seeing rolling out around us right now and the impact that they have on our nervous system and, you know, how do we hold others with compassion that is a bigger topic for another day and actually maybe that's something that we could explore here. It's a big naughty one that is, particularly when some of the behaviours feel so, incredibly challenging to observe and I just want to say here that compassion is not passive.
Henny Flynn:Compassion and I know I've talked about it in the podcast before, but compassion has action inherent within it, so when we see something unfolding around us, where we have a deep and visceral no that is not okay, then actually often our most compassionate act is to step forward and to act. I'm really mindful here of the walking monks, you may have heard about their story, they're walking, I think it's two and a half thousand miles, something like that, from Fort Worth to Washington and it's absolutely astonishing this walk of peace now that is compassion in action it's saying we need to take action, we need to literally move and say something has to change here, but it's done with such loving hearts, that it doesn't just add to the anguish and the tension and the fear and the pain that is in the world, it actually does something to alleviate it and that for me is just been the most beautiful thing to witness and you know for millions of people it is feeling like the most beautiful thing to witness because it's compassion in action. So yeah, I've gone slightly off topic that kind of happens sometimes doesn't it but, there's something else here about you know recognising that just as we have choice in our actions, we have choice in the way that we speak to ourselves, we have choice in the way that we speak to others, and sometimes it's kind of easier to recognise that it's sort of easier to recognise that we can be careful about the words that we use and the tone of voice that we use and the timing of when we speak, you know, to other people, that almost feels easier than recognising that actually we have ultimate control over, the way that we speak to ourselves and that when we speak kindly to ourselves that ripples out in the way that we are present with other people too and often what you find is that people who are, you know, find it very difficult to relate to others with sort of love and harmony and peacefulness, it's often because their internal dialogue is very, very challenging and so seeing that we have this choice can be a really powerful step forward in the way that we care for ourselves and also in actually practically changing the way that we speak to ourselves and Kristin Neff, the incredible researcher and expert in compassion, she always says that self compassion is basically speaking with ourselves as we would a dear friend and for me that obviously talks directly to this idea of like how we can use our self talk as part of our self compassion practice and so the reason why this came up for me today is partly because I sort of noticed that little bit of oh, I need to get on a little bit of self judgment when I was thinking about getting ready for tonight, but also because I'd opened my journal at random and saw the prompt that I used in this particular session that I'm referencing that was in Insight Timer a couple of weeks ago and I thought I would read to you what I wrote, in my journal and the invitation is to write this prompt at the top of a piece of paper, maybe in your own journal and see what comes from it for you.
Henny Flynn:I'll put the prompt into the show notes as well. So the prompt is when I speak kindly to myself I see dot dot dot, when I speak kindly to myself I see. See what comes. Anyway, this is what came for me just in two or three minutes, and maybe something in it resonates with you. It's not hugely deep, but it was very real.
Henny Flynn:This is unedited. So when I speak kindly to myself, I see that everything is easier. The world feels kinder. I am softer, gentler and others feel that way too. I'm better able to manage setbacks and problems.
Henny Flynn:It doesn't mean they don't happen, but it does mean I can navigate them and hold them in perspective. I also see how harshly I've spoken to myself in the past, times when I've ridiculed and hurt myself with meaning and without meaning too, simply because I've become so used to speaking that way. It's the softest, easiest thing to do and can be one of the hardest to shift, but the kindness begins with the awareness and with love. So I think that is enough for today because otherwise I will be late I also just want to say very quickly that, this last week I sent my new website live and this was an example of needing to really pay attention to my self talk, to how I related to myself, when I'd sent it live, and if you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed I did a post about the vulnerability boomerang and this thing that can happen when we put something out into the world, particularly something that's creative or something that we've created in some way, and then we feel vulnerable afterwards and we feel very visible and we feel maybe highly sensitized or a bit more activated to stimulus than we might ordinarily feel and so really paying attention to that inner voice then is very important, because the inner voice might tell us a whole load of things, because it's scared and because it feels a bit fragile and because it doesn't know what this new thing is that we've stepped into, it's unknown and that can feel very scary for the parts of ours that have these kind of egoic tendencies, so I'm sort of sharing that partly because this is lived work and also partly to say, please do go and have a look at the new website and I'd love to hear what you think of it and to find it just go to hennyflinn.co.uk and I've been very thoughtful and tender actually about how I've crafted, how it now looks and feels and I really hope that speaks to something within you and I would really love to hear your reflections because obviously you're the person that I've written it for and I really hope if something arises for you that you feel you could share that with me, because all reflections are really, really useful and the other thing I'm going to say as well is if you haven't ever written a review, you know, a testimonial, I can't remember what you call them, like for the podcast, and you listen on Apple, please do leave a review, because it's the best way of sharing this work and I'm feeling more and more, you know, the importance of this connection that we have and the value of this deep work of self compassion and the part it plays in the world and how we collectively connect and move forward in the most positive beneficial way that we can for all living things.
Henny Flynn:So I think whatever we can each do to spread the word of that is good and maybe this little podcast plays one tiny tiny tiny part in that and if there's any part of you that feels that it does, then please do, you know, share a thought in the, in the feedback, review options. I really ought to work out what that word is but you know what I mean. Okay I'm going to stop and I'm going to go and I'm going to go and listen to Prince by Candlelight and I wish you the most wonderful rest of your day whatever it might hold and I send you love and a hug and a wave.