virtuous kindness cycles
Daphne's Not nice starts:
I haven’t been nice to myself lately.
Admitting being unkind to yourself lately opens more doors than identifying as someone unkind to yourself. Remember when you have been nice to yourself? The same way you chose kindness then is the same way you can choose kindness now. Instead of saying it's easy, I'm saying it's possible.
I’ve been letting my negative thoughts get the best of me. I don’t like this feeling one bit.
Letting negative thoughts and actions get the best of you shows that their positive counterparts could unlock the best in you. Tightening your loosened grip on your agency can inspire the confidence to lead your thoughts and actions.
And, I feel terrible when I catch myself because it only leads me to further the negative talk on the fact that I'm being negative. Shit.
Lamenting your present negativity invites remembering how you previously journeyed toward positivity. You have climbed mountains like these before. You can climb them once again.
Fran's Virtuous cycles offers a path forward, featuring her own real-world examples:
An easy way to do more good stuff is get into a virtuous cycle. The opposite of the more well-known vicious cycle, or circle.
The more I write the more progress I make and the more I improve. Progress and improvement is motivating, makes me feel good, I'm getting somewhere, so the more I am motivated to write and the more progress I make, and so on.
It works on larger scales too, like getting more people cycling.
The better I do the more motivated I feel, the more I want to do it, the better I get because I'm doing it more. It's an easy feedback loop.
Her formula shows how action breeds motivation, even if you start from square zero:
On motivation, reverse the formula. Find motivation from actions. A ball at rest remains. A ball in motion keeps moving. It's as Theseus says in i frequently sit in...:
I frequently sit in front of an empty canvas uninspired to make the first step. Then as soon as I've made the first step, everything sort of falls into place.
Like how you continue to learn and practice throughout your life, instilling kindness within starts with that first step. As Neil Armstrong's famous quote goes:
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.