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True Stories: How A Simple Self-Compassion Challenge Transformed Theya’s Day

They'a’s self-compassion journalling spot

Here’s an email I received from Theya:

Subject: Thank you!!!

Dear Shamash,

I would like to thank you so much for this special gift!!!

The Self-Compassion Challenge and Journal came to me at a time when I needed it most.

Honestly, I missed the first 2 weeks and kept on having no time for it and was just storing the emails in a separate folder as they came into my inbox.

Then just after coming back from my visit to Bulgaria, I felt very tired and a bit low.

So, one day I went to my favourite local cafe called "Gail's" - it was the 14th of February - and decided to do something for myself.

I popped into the bookshop and then went for a cappuccino.

I decided that it would be a good time to have a look at the challenge.

I took my phone and a journal that I usually have with me and started reading the Day 1 email…

And then I couldn't stop until reaching Day 14 (and it was already in the afternoon and time to collect my child Momo from school ...)

Certainly this was one of my best Saint Valentine’s days :-)

Since then I was impatient to wait for the next day’s challenge and started checking my Inbox around 10.30am each day...

I did not miss any of the days until today and I kept on journaling each day,

I was actually craving for the next challenge to arrive...

I didn't expect that I needed it so much for myself...

I was thinking at the start that it is more to learn something for my potential audience in the future...

Here’s a photo of my desk and journal that I was using:

Now I am looking forward to making a plan on how to proceed further with a regular self-compassion practice for myself (I started the Day 24 daily habit practice), but would like to add more to this.

Of course it also gave me material for a lot of thoughts and ideas on how to share and how to teach self-compassion to my clients too.

But the truth is, I didn't recognise my own needs until I started practising myself.

I’m now more motivated than ever before to teach self-compassion in the future more in detail, and to encourage my students to also enroll on a longer journey...

I've started my own challenge for my Bulgarian parent group and it was very well received.

I liked the Journal and its kind invitation for filling it in, as well as the quotes on each page.

I find my way to practice self-compassion works best by using visual clues/graphics/pictures and by journaling...

Sometimes I was just handwriting and copying your text from the emails, and this brought me a lot of calm and relief, especially in last week.

That's my Day 28 "homework" - the end of a cycle and the start of a new journey to explore self-compassion further.

Hope I didn't bother you too much with my story, but I was thinking is good to share how your "baby" went in the world :-)

With warm compassion,

Theya

I hope you enjoyed this message. You too can try our 28-day Self-Compassion Challenge for free!

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