How do we put down our armour of self-sufficiency and competence?

While it protects us from challenges and shields us from criticism, it also cuts us off from deep connection and essential support.

We think that we need the armour to “hold ourselves together” because if we “let go”, we might not be able to pull ourselves together again.

Holding it all in affects our ability to be creative, make healthy business decisions, and have lives which spring from our core values.

Holding it all in is a form of unkindness to ourselves because we’re not allowing ourselves to show weakness. We’re telling ourselves that weakness is bad.

Holding it all in means we don’t really get to see what’s inside.

We cut ourselves off from our sense of inner knowing, and from really knowing others.

We are social animals that have evolved to survive as a group. Not as individuals.

But in the modern world of the hyper-successful founders and all-knowing influencers we’ve forgotten this.

We’ve forgotten how to be really happy  because we’re too busy striving.

To experience real happiness we need to experience all three directions of kindness: giving to others, giving to ourselves, and receiving.

Which means from time to time we need to put our armour down.

On this episode of the podcast, we’re joined by Anya Pearse, an intuitive advisor, Head of Positive Psychology at The Museum of Happiness, and Fellow of the Positive Psychology Guild.

She has reframed her 15 years of disability through chronic illness into a spiritual path, combining a researcher’s curiosity, a poet’s turn of phrase, and a comic’s sense of timing to explore and share positive psychology and self-compassion with others.

At the Happy Startup School we believe that community is foundational to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive in this modern money-driven world.

We’re not built of the same stuff as the unicorn driving silicon valley founders or the hard nosed CEOs of the corporate world.

We crave connection and we thrive on mutual support.

In our conversation we explore how kindness and compassion are essential to our way of doing and being in business.