The Net and the Butterfly by Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack

Author:Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-07T12:02:26+00:00

After going through the Metta exercise, our clients often report a physical sense of relief, their shoulders sagging during the forgiveness visualization, and then warmth rising during the self-approval process. Many people feel warmth in their solar plexus region. Some describe a kind of “exquisite ache,” or feeling “very tender.” No matter what you experience, if you are feeling anything, it means it’s working.

Even when the experience itself doesn’t “feel” like it’s working, Metta is worth doing because of the spillover effect it produces. Often, though the exercise itself feels disconcerting, you will notice throughout the rest of the day that you are more present, connecting better with others, and better able to absorb and enjoy the good moments in your life. As self-compassion researcher and author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion Christopher Germer puts it: “A moment of self-compassion like this can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.”52

You can use Metta visualization anytime you experience an attack of the internal critic. As Germer suggests, you can think of self-compassion as standing up to self-harm the same way you’d stand up to something threatening a loved one.

Researchers who started experimenting with these kinds of visualizations with highly self-critical people reported “significant reductions in depression, anxiety, self-criticism, shame, and inferiority,” while noting a “significant increase in feelings of warmth and reassurance for the self.”53

Now that you know how to handle the fear of failure, let’s look at how to handle the experience of failure itself.

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