The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

Here are some poems I wrote recently and a self portrait I did. This self portrait gave me the direction I want to take illustrations for my book; a watery, loose approach and black and white. That’s what I plan to do from now on. I am going to start painting pictures from my childhood in addition to self portraits. Yesterday I started doing that. I don’t yet feel like sharing those, but as I improve maybe I’ll start posting them.

Self compassion hands down. Learning to be a good friend to myself has improved my life in so, so many ways. It started with a book I read called Self Compassion by a clinical psychologist named Kristen Neff. I read that book 4 or 5 times in a period of about 6 months and started doing all the exercises in my daily life. Then I bought a workbook by the same author with a lot of written and practical exercises in it. Did that whole workbook in about 2 weeks time.

Self compassion has helped me with procrastination, anxiety and panic attacks. It didn’t make that all go away, it’s not supposed to banish pain, but it helped me live with the pain instead of fighting it all the time. Accepting the pain, simply allowing it to be, and comforting myself for it makes the pain less likely to tip into suffering and makes it pass a lot more quickly.

Every day I write a kind letter to myself with comforting words for whatever I might be struggling with. I practice mindfulness each day for 30 minutes, I meditate and do a loving kindness meditation sending out good thoughts for others and myself, and I have changed my inner dialogue. My inner critic is now a lot kinder and more supportive. It’s a friend. Sometimes it tells me hard truths, but always in a way that is constructive and ready to supply ideas about how I might overcome an obstacle. Instead of beating myself up for everything, I comfort myself and encourage myself.

I know it seems like if you are constantly nice to yourself, you might lose self discipline, but that’s not the case. I find myself more motivated to get things done and happier with the results of what I do. I’m less of a perfectionist and can more easily accept failures and learn from them and I go on to have more successes because I’m not constantly procrastinating and putting things off. If anything, I’m more disciplined now than I ever was before self compassion.