How to Soften the Inner Critic

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.

[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome to Gaming Going Deeper, a podcast by the Gaiman's Brotherhood that showcases raw and real conversations about personal development, mental health and sexuality from an unapologetically gay perspective. I am your host, Matt Lansdell, and joining me today is Scott Stabile.

[00:00:24] Speaker A: I'm so happy to be with you, brother.

[00:00:26] Speaker B: Yeah, so happy to have you here.

For those of you who don't know Scott, some of you might know Scott already, but Scott is a passionate love advocate, breathwork guide and author of Big the Undeniable Joy of Following your Heart and his most recent book, Enough as yous Are Correct.

[00:00:41] Speaker A: Correct.

[00:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. He is a soulful storyteller, unafraid to dive deep into the human experience.

Through his books, talks and personal empowerment workshops, Scott invites us to choose love even in the darkest of times, and to fully embrace our messy, beautiful selves. He's not just a teacher, he's a fellow traveler navigating the hard, sacred work of being human.

Scott and I met at a retreat in Costa Rica and immediately hit it off. I'm surprised it's taken us this long to get you on the podcast, but yeah, we do. We do very similar work. We're living very similar purposes and I'm super excited to have you on the podcast and talk about inner critic. So how to soften the inner critic and moving from self judgment to self compassion. That's what we're going to be breaking down today. What we want you to get out of this episode is just a deeper understanding of your inner critic, essentially your own self judgments, where they might come from and how you can start being more accepting and compassionate and loving towards yourself as well as towards others.

And we're going to be unpacking a bunch of great things today. So yeah, I'm curious for you, Scott. You know, why this work. I know we've all got our own kind of origin story around why we do this work, why we're so seekers and you know, why we're helping other people on this path. What's, what's kind of your. Your purpose and passion around this work.

[00:02:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel called to, to share about my time in the cult in San Francisco. That's really what got me started in on really understanding the power of love in our lives.

And just to be clear to everyone watching or listening first, I want to say thank you, Matt. I love you. I'm just so happy to that we're friends and that we connected in Costa Rica.

I really, really appreciate the work that predominantly you and Michael are doing and Reno and whomever else you're bringing in with this, with the podcast and the community and what you all are creating there, I. I find it not just inspiring, but exciting and necessary. And you all are so committed, and you show up to every podcast so prepared. Like, I'm. I'm someone who, like, I just fly by the wing of my pant, whatever that expression is. It's like, yeah. You know what I mean? And I'm. When I talk about the podcast, I'm like, they're so prepared. The way they introduce every episode, it's with this breakdown. And they've really done their work. So thank you for what you're bringing to us all.

[00:03:05] Speaker B: Thank you. Appreciate the recognition. Yeah.

[00:03:08] Speaker A: And I was in my 20s in San Francisco. I was working at a new age store called Planet Weavers Treasure Store at the time. It no longer exists. But many of the employees and managers and everyone, they were all students of this guru.

And I'm coming from Michigan. I had just gotten out of college, moved to San Francisco. I had never heard the word enlightenment. That was just so far beyond anything I was aware of.

And gurus like that wasn't in my vortex at all. But I was meeting all these people, and they were so lovely, and we were becoming close, and they kept talking about kind of becoming more peaceful and more loving as their mission in life. Like, not career and what they wanted to do in that way, but how they wanted to be more loving individuals. And I thought, this, I can get behind. Like, this I'm vibing with. So it was only a matter of time before I was like, I want to meet your guru. Because they kept talking about this man.

And I did eventually meet him. And I became a part of that community, which I do refer to as a cult, because freedom of choice was not paramount, I would say, in that community, which I think is what kind of tips something over into a cult. It's like what the guru says is right. He is the channel of God. If you disagree with him, you're objecting to God's will for you. Like all of this messaging and only what he says is ultimate truth.

And yet we were also talking about love. What he was preaching was love, love. Return to love. Always return to love. Unconditional love, unconditional friendship. Let these be the driving forces behind your life, and your life will change. Yeah. So that message really resonated with me, and I have a lot of really beautiful memories in that community. I was a part of it for 13 years.

It ended, as culty things often do, in a very ugly way.

And what I was shown was I don't believe he ultimately practiced what he preached and I don't believe he was ultimately an enlightened master as I, as I did believe him to be for many years. Yeah, but the, the lessons around love are just that that relentless commitment to return to love really stayed with me and I started to bring more awareness to myself and my life when I was in alignment with, and I should say this too, because love is such a, like this grandiose term and it can feel really woo woo for some to listen to and others are like, well, what is even love? What is he talking about? So I just want to share how I experience love. I experience it as an energy that for me is what love is. And it's an abundant, ever present energy that is alive within us, outside of us.

And in the same way that I experience creativity as an energy. Right. It's like when we choose to play with the energy of love, when we choose to act in alignment with that energy and be guided in our choices and our words and our thoughts by that energy. What I've observed in my life is that everything feels better.

Which is to say we're human beings, we all want to give and receive love. I see it as our most innate desire.

And I also feel, I should say I'm just speaking to you, I'm not a psychologist. I'm speaking to you from my lived experience.

I really encourage people. What I say, if it lands, take it in. If it doesn't, discard it. You know, be with whatever I'm saying, however you need to be with it. But when I pay attention to myself and the choices I'm making, when they are aligned with love, I feel more at home in my body, I feel more at peace in my experience.

And I believe that love always transcends self. So when you spoke in the beginning, you said we're going to look at ways in which we can love ourselves better and then also love others.

It's like that's the only possibility. As I see it, that is the great gift of the energy of love, that it is an all serving energy.

So anyone listening? Any energy you're giving to loving yourself in a deeper way, you can trust that is going to be of service to the people in your life. And we know this.

[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's beautiful. I just, I want to maybe articulate how I see love as well. It's like a beautiful umbrella. It's a state of being, I think, I don't think it's a feeling, per se, that we feel. It's a state of being. And I think it's the root of things like compassion and acceptance and kindness and generosity and forgiveness. And it's. You know, so it's really hard. I was trying to think before we had a question. I think you had said, how do you define love? And I was thinking about this before coming on, and I'm like, I had a hard time grabbing at what is a definition because I think it's a really hard thing to define. And I came to presence, and you came to energy, which I think are the synonyms for the same. Same expression. And I think I would wholeheartedly agree. It's my question I want to ask you is, do you think that the. You know, I, like, always like to break things down into duality? I think human beings are just creatures of duality. And we have the human self, the spiritual self, or we could say the egoic self, which is the personality structure. And then we have the soul, which is like the heart structure. Right. Do you think that love is experienced differently in either of those two states? And if so, how.

[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yes. And I would say the way I understand things is. Is one. What you just referred to as duality, for me can also just be one consciousness. And we are creating, like, I see different energy centers. I see the egoic energy center, the heart energy center, and the soul energy center. Even those energy centers feel different to me. So when I'm in my soul, I feel like I'm just a total observer. There's no judgment. There's no love. There's no suffering. There's just peace. There's just bearing witness to the experience of Scott, the human living this life in learning. And for those. For those who believe we're returning to the earth and. And reincarnating and living through lifetimes. For me, it's the soul that's doing that. When I'm in my heart center, that's just where love emanates. That's just alive with the energy of love. And so when I'm connecting to my heart, the only instruction I am ever given is just love. And I'm like, even that.

And like, yep, even that. Like, the heart is unrelenting. Sorry, can we swear on. I can't remember.

So, yeah, the heart is unrelenting with its. Its mandate of, like, just love. And. And that's why for me, when I'm in my heart, everything becomes easier because I'm not. I'm not confused by what I need to be Thinking about someone or doing about someone energet…