Kindness Is Cool and Everyone Knows It

Here’s the transcript from this week’s podcast of that ⬆️ title:

Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in. I’m Dana, and this is The Revolution Within podcast. The title is referring to having a revolution within yourself which is what happens when you learn how to be truly kind to yourself. 

Before I begin, let me tell you how you can find me or purchase a coaching package with me: my website is revolution-within.com, I’m on instagram @ revolution_within31, and you can reach me via email at dana@revolution-within.com. 

Okay, let’s dive into this, shall we?

Why self-kindness? 

Well…without self kindness you can achieve anything in this world but you won’t allow yourself to enjoy it or appreciate it fully.

Complete selflessness is great…in theory. But there’s a law in physics called The Law of conservation of energy, and that states: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.

And the law is the law. You can deny science all you want, but if you deny this one, it’s like saying gravity is fake news.

So when you’re giving and giving your energy away and not having it replenished (exchanged) in some satisfying way, you become depleted because you’re not able to create more. 

That’s depression. That’s deeply rooted pain in your body from your emotions that have been suppressed.

My goal is to teach you how to be the light you need in your darkest times. 

Because THAT is where the most profound and powerful light comes from - it comes from within you. Now other people can support you and other people can encourage you. That’s great, and I love it when I receive it. And yes, you can rely on other people sometimes. 

But the people who shine the brightest and have the most energy - the people that you can feel the energy rise when they walk into a room -  are the people who have found it within themselves.

And yeah, I know that sometimes people are bouncy and happy and jokey all of the time but living in pain underneath…like, the late and brilliant comic actor Robin Williams comes to mind. While it’s true that we can never really know what someone else is going through, my point is that the most effective way to manage your own emotional pain is by finding your deepest, most profound compassion, grace, and acceptance within yourself FOR yourself.

You can be that for yourself. If you’ve ever looked around and felt so alone like you didn’t have a soul in the world…where you need to look is within. 

Because we’re never actually alone. We always have ourselves, and the most intimate relationship you will ever have is with yourself. It doesn’t mean that you have to be or that you need to be alone. And it doesn’t mean that you have to love yourself before you’re with somebody else; that’s ridiculous. We’re always a work in progress. And you’re never gonna get to the end point and be like I’m perfect now and now I can find love. That’s not how any of this shit works.

But we’re not alone because we are part of the Universe. We always have God, our Creator, the Universe, Source …whatever word you want to use. We’re all connected through our Creator. That means you’re not alone.

Everything is energy. Like I said earlier, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only exchanged. We are made up of energy. The universe is made up of energy. You were created for a reason and you are here for a purpose. 

I’m also not saying everything happens for a reason because sometimes we don’t fucking know why things happen; but the way that you manage it, the way that you handle it, the way you let it affect you when things go horribly wrong? That’s what determines how your life goes.

If you find yourself perpetually thinking that everything goes wrong for you or nothing ever goes your way and you have a lot of “poor me” or self-pitying thinking…then you need to learn how to do this. 

I’m just going to share an example.

I have a friend who is such a lovely kind, wonderful person, but she has enabled in her life a relationship that has completely drained her. But instead of leaving, she continues living with him because she feels responsible for him and he’s basically a complete energy vampire, he’s draining this woman, but she stays because she’s convinced herself that she Can’t Leave. That she’s responsible for him and cannot imagine anything outside of this comfortable misery she lives in.

That's a phrase you're going to hear me say a lot, comfortable misery. Because misery, you're thinking, how, Dana, how can misery be comfortable? Well, I think a lot of people end up in lives that they're not loving and they stay in them and just live miserably because it's comfortable.

Because trying to leave something or better yourself, being really brave is scary as hell. And it puts you really far into the unknown, which everything's the unknown, by the way. If it hasn't happened yet, you don't know what's going to happen.

But putting yourself into an unknown situation is terrifying for most of us. So a lot of us live in what I call a state of comfortable misery. That's my side note about that.

And I get it. That’s terrifying. Now doing the drastic thing of selling the house and taking that money and leaving this person would change her life. Now initially it would seem like it would change for the worse, because that kind of *PBBBBBTTTT* blow up your life is a big deal and a lot of transition and emotional pain happens when you do that.

But honestly? It would probably add 10 years to her life, and it sure as hell would improve her health and quality of life. 

But she’s the only one who can make that decision. And as much as I want to help her, as much as I want to continue to coach her to help her figure it out…I can’t do that for her. She has to do that for her. I can only expend so much of MY energy to my friends, because I have myself to practice self-kindness.

Also, I no longer give my coaching away or undervalue it because, among other reasons, I have a family that I need to contribute to financially.

And it’s just occurred to me that this friend will never guess that I’m talking about her because I can think of more than one that this is applying to right now. That’s kinda sad.

I’m gonna mention my future bestie Mel Robbins here. I’m kind of obsessed with Mel. I think she’s amazing and  joke about her being my future bestie because one of my goals is to be on her podcast someday. How fucking rad would that be?

So my future bestie Mel just wrote a book that got released last month called The Let Them Theory which I can’t wait to listen to, I just downloaded it on Audible. 

That is what 2024 brought to the surface for me, even before she wrote the book. Her book is synchronicity. I’d heard similar tomes before: Many years ago I had a friend say, “People do what they do, and you can’t control any of it.”

Well, last year really highlighted how I need to “Let Them” in my own life. I have gotten emotionally invested in just about everyone I’ve ever met. I have gone out of my way to overly extend myself to help people fix things in their lives WAY beyond anything they’ve ever asked of me, really. 

Why? Because I really fucking care about people. I’m an empathic person and I care deeply about people and their outcomes, particularly those I feel a connection to. But I had to really start practicing how to let them. 

And I teach people how to “let them.” That’s the whole thing behind learning how to be kind to yourself and stop being a people pleaser. It’s one thing to understand the concept; it’s entirely different to actively use it. 

The thing that I want to emphasize in the process of learning how to “let people do what people do” is that, in order to be able to do that, you need to learn how to be really kind to yourself throughout the process.

Because if you just say fuck these people let them do whatever they want then you’re gonna be dealing with emotions of either guilt or resentment or bitterness. Who needs that nonsense.

My future bestie Mel Robbins does these things from a place of love and self-kindness, obviously, because she is a successful person who’s overcome a great deal of obstacles. She’s very confident, she knows her worth, and that shows in everything she does.

When you know your worth and you base all of your decisions in releasing people from your life in that, in knowing that you’re enough, that you don’t need these people in your life, that they can decide whether or not to be in your life? it’s a game changer.

I’ll use an example in my own life. I recently released a friendship that was really important to me. I really cared about this person a lot, but the last conversation that we had it became very clear to me that he was just going along to get along in our friendship. I was doing all these nice things and I was being very supportive and he was just taking it just to take it, like he was patting me on the head and humoring me. 

And when I realized not only how condescending it was but also how draining it was to care about someone who so clearly couldn’t give a fuck about my friendship or himself, really, I stopped reaching out. And he doesn’t reach out. And it really hurt.

But now I’m a few months out from it and I see that all of the good shit that was in that friendship - the fun, the great conversations that we had, the connection that I thought we had…that was me. It was me bringing it. 

I brought the heat. I brought the fun. I brought the creativity (we sort of wrote music together). We’d have a couple drinks and hang out, we’d talk about everything you can think of and had so much fun. 

And he’d tell me how much fun he had, too. But his actions said something quite different. He would just drop off the face of the earth for days, weeks. I mean that’s fine, we’re busy people. But I wanted more time and I wasn’t getting it, so I had to release that energy. And good grief, once I did? I felt so much lighter.

I realized that the connection, the magic? That was all me. And it was something that, even though logically I knew I didn’t, I still felt like I had to find in someone else. But as much as that relationship hurt me, it was really enlightening and taught me that I don’t need to find that in someone else, because it’s already inside myself. And I don’t think or feel that way anymore, like I have to look outside to find it. 

Okay so back to the matter at hand. So why self kindness? well, when you do things from a place of self kindness, and you pull that kindness from within, and you know that you’ve got your own back, and you can trust your own decisions…that’s when you  can REALLY feel and trust your intuition. 

Because your intuition tells you when a situation isn’t good for you. It always does. You might wanna believe that that person “should be” in your life and that the friendship is equitable and that you’re going to get back what you’re putting in someday…when that person isn’t so busy, or so…whatever. 

But you know deep down when someone’s words don’t match their actions. And when you’re profoundly kind to yourself it’s so much easier to see and feel it immediately. It’s like, OBVIOUS.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give to people. All I’m saying that relationships are an exchange of energy. All relationships are. I’m not only talking about romantic ones. I’m talking all relationships. This wasn’t a romantic relationship, it was a friendship that I just talked about. 

But if the exchange of energy is really lopsided, and if that’s the case it doesn’t work. if you’re the one always calling, if you’re the one always reaching out, if you’re the one always bringing things over and always making the plans…How does that make you feel? Does that make you feel like YOU’RE a good friend, that you HAVE a good friend, or both? 

it’s supposed to be both. 

In my situation I was the one being the good friend, and I wasn’t getting the same thing in return. 

And this person is actually a good guy. He just wasn’t capable of giving me what I wanted and deserved in return, so I had to walk away.

Now I often see people really get their feelings hurt about that; like “why am I always the one getting rejected, what’s wrong with me?”

Nothing‘s wrong with you. That’s not the right person for you. There are other people out there who want to be your friend or romantic partner, there are other people out there who may have more in common with you energetically or who have more time available to you. 

Personally, I know that I’m an absolute fucking delight, that’s been my mantra for years. I enjoy my own company more than I enjoy almost anybody else’s. And I’m not saying that in an arrogant way or like a resentful or bitter way; it’s because I’ve done the work to really get to know who I am and to forgive myself for the terrible shit that I’ve done and to forgive other people for the terrible shit that they’ve done. 

And I’ve really found a very content place in myself, and I want to teach other people how to find that too. That’s my intent here.

I mean,I also enjoy the company of my children, my husband, my extended family and my closest friends and if I meet a new person and we hit it off, I will make the effort to hang out and if I don’t get it back then it’s gone. I walk away. 

But what I don’t do? I don’t think about what’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with me. I mean I have a lot of flaws, but that’s because I’m a human being. We all do, but I’m pretty happy with myself and who I am. I accept myself. I’m content with myself. I am not happy all the time, but I am at peace with who I am all of the time. 

When I leave a friendship or situation with a person, I don’t walk away from it thinking what is wrong with me? I walk away from it thinking wow that’s a missed opportunity for that person. 

Now it took me a longgggg time to get here. I used to wonder what was wrong with me. In fact I spent many decades wondering what was wrong with me…that’s what led me here. 

I have done and still do A LOT of work. I still do every day. I work on this because I’m a work in progress, we all are. We’re supposed to learn, we’re supposed to grow. we’re not supposed to be fixed in our mindset. We’re supposed to grow our mindset. 

That’s the point of being a human being on this planet in this timeline.

And in order to do that, in order to really grow your mindset from narrow-minded to growth-minded is to learn how to be profoundly kind to yourself.

Because when you are deeply profoundly kind to yourself, you can be disappointed with yourself without berating yourself over your mistakes. You can look at ways to improve without bashing yourself over the things that you need to improve first. And you can “let them” from a place of love and compassion rather than resentment and “fuck that dude.” Which that’s really your inner insecurity and feelings of not belonging talking. 

So the moral of this particular story that I really hope you can take away from this is: Start learning how to let people do what they do and not let it affect you personally so much. 

Because that shit has nothing to do with you. Most people are not ever thinking about you. They’re only thinking about themselves. We do the same thing. I do the same thing. we all do. we’re all thinking about ourselves first. so when you’re wondering why people reject you, or what’s wrong with you…there isn’t anything wrong with you. You simply need to learn how to accept yourself as a flawed human being who is worthy and enough just as you are right now. 

That’s what I have for you this week, my friends. I’ll talk to you next week and remember - all will be well. Take care.

If you want to get in touch, here’s how: email me at dana@revolution-within.com

Love & Hugs,

Dana