Your Happy Place

A safe space in your mind.

Sometimes, we truly underestimate the enormous potential that our mind has. It shows us stories as we sleep, gives us brilliant ideas, learns new skills, forgets unimportant information. It feels bound by many restrictions, yet has the capacity to travel to unlimited places. You can transport yourself to a distant past, to stay right here in the moment, or imagine a future. It can bring us up, can throw us down, it's how we form our identities and is the storehouse of all our experiences. .

Self-compassion has a great deal to do with learning how to be comfortable enough with ourselves to be able to confront our most uncomfortable emotions. Although you have been under your own nose right along, it may seem strange to realize that you could be part of your own support system.

What if you could carve out a safe space for yourself within your own mind?

We see it in shows and movies all the time (usually during near-death sequences or other such climactic moment); the main character is transferred from their real lives to an idyllic paradise in the character's mind. The place has no crowds, no noise and no pain. It's the place the character confronts their will to live or explores their life's purpose. Luckily, in real life, you could make a space now, today or anytime.

Try this thought experiment:

Part I: Finding your happy place.

Pick a quiet time, comfortable spot and close your eyes.

Try to imagine a truly beautiful place that feels calming for you. It can be real or imaginary. You can try thinking of a few different places and settle on the most comforting one.

Next, pretend that you are actually there. Experience it in your mind's eye: Is it night or day? Windy or unmoving? Hot or cold?

This could be your personal happy place or safe space, where you go to converse with yourself. In instances when you feel sad, low, anxious, angry or uncomfortable, or when you're happy, it is a ready place for you to visit.

Tip: Feel free to change the view once in a while. A single spot may feel more stable initially when you start to associate that spot with a place of comfort. However, as long as you feel comfortable and calm in a new place, it's completely alright to be on a mountain top one day, and be at the beach the next.

Do: customize your happy place to suit your preference. Experiment with places and things that you wish to allow in the safe space. It's yours to do with it what you wish.

Don't: choose a place that is flashy or distracting to an extent that you can't concentrate on what you're really there for: to converse with yourself, not distract yourself from life.

But this is not an end in itself. What do you actually do in your happy place? This brings us to...

Part II: Visiting your happy place.

Your happy place is somewhere you can visit anytime, but you may find it most useful when you're struggling to make a decision, recuperating from a fight, or just wish to self-reflect.

• When you are in your happy place, picture a compassionate figure walking with you (or sitting with you or standing with you). This figure could be a kinder and more accepting version of yourself, an imaginary person you create, an actual person you know and feel loved with, or even a fictional character you really connect with. It could also just be you and no one else. The important thing to recognize here is that it's a place to be heard and accepted, not criticized and judged.

• Ask yourself or have a conversation with this kind figure about what's bothering you: you feel angry or lonely or insecure or worried about the future or lost and afraid. No matter what it is, it is allowed.

• Let you (the person who created the happy place) share freely what you feel with the figure. Let the compassionate figure listen to you. Let them be kind to you. Let them offer you words of comfort or just say sorry you're going through this because life is hard. Let them behave the way you wish someone who truly understands you would behave. Or let them be there for you the way you would be there for a friend in their difficult time.

• Do this for a short while, say say thank you and leave when you feel ready.

Tip: Don't restrict yourself. This is a free space where you're just allowed to be you, minus judgment and criticism.

Do: remember that you can come back to this place anytime.

Don't: confuse this as an exercise in escapism. Reality hits hard and there is no real running away from that. However, that doesn't mean you can't travel inward and give your thoughts and feelings a chance to be heard by yourself and accepted non-judgmentally.

The truth is we are in an internal dialogue with ourselves a great deal of our waking hours, and it's so ingrained we might not even notice it (we call this self-talk). Yet that little voice in your mind influences you and you influence it on a daily basis and the process goes largely unnoticed. It would be nice to give yourself an opportunity to have a conscious dialogue with it in a space where there isn't judgment or shame.

For Harry Potter, it was an empty train station with the wisest person he knew, his headmaster. For Meredith Grey, it was a beach, surrounded by people she loves. For you, it could be a valley, in the sky, in outer space or right at home. John Milton once said, "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." This is one of those few places it's all up to you.