Understanding Self-Criticism in Youth

Welcome back. This is another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. And you guessed it, we’re hanging out with a new friend. His name is Matt Kovatchis. And just to tell you a little bit about Matt, he is an ex-corporate banker, turned mental health speaker, facilitator, and executive coach. And he runs this organization called Purposely Present. It really caught my eye.

And it’s interesting the way he’s working with youth and college students. And we’re talking all about self-criticism versus self-compassion today. So Matt, welcome to the drug prevention power hour.

Thank you for having me, Jake. I really appreciate the introduction. I’m super apt to be here. I took a look at the podcast beforehand. I think you’re doing amazing work. So I just want to give you your well-deserved flowers.

I appreciate that, dude. I always love a good pat on the back and a little gratefulness. And back at you because, I mean, every guest here is special to me because you’re pouring out your expertise, your passion to other people. So to set us off, just like to lay the groundwork for today’s episode, you talk a lot about self-criticism and self-compassion, but can you tell me how and maybe even why self-criticism shows up for today’s youth?

Yeah, I think a lot of it is at the societal level. So we are told that we all have big dreams and we’re supposed to dream big and in order to get there, we have to push ourselves. But we’re told in order to push myself, I gotta be hard on myself. And that’s the only way to shame myself into action. And in reality, in most cases, that’s actually hindering our growth.

So that’s one reason I think we’re constantly competing and comparing ourselves with one another. mean, think about today’s day and age with social media. And in reality, the only person we should be really competing with is ourselves. Now that’s very difficult to do when we are constantly shown, not even just classmates and how they’re performing, but social media and everyone and all the things that they’re doing and the problem, we start to compare ourselves.

There’s always going to be somebody that has more fill in the blank than we are. Put in whatever you want. More money, more social media followers, a better physique. And so what does that leave us feeling? Like we’re not enough. Like I’m not doing enough. Look at them. They’ve got their life figured out. They’re doing all the things and look at me. And so what do we do? We shame ourselves. We try to use that as motivation for growth. And we, there’s this idea in a lot of this, especially with youth, mean, it actually rolls into adulthood but soon.

It develops early on when we’re young and impressionable and we don’t even realize it. So if you think about anybody and it could be a parent, it could be a caretaker, but it could also be a teacher. It could be a coach, not a good one, who are very hard on you, where they only are giving you a round of applause or giving you love, encouragement, support, recognition when you’re perfect. And so if you get the perfect grade on the test, play the perfect game, good job. But if you don’t, what’s wrong with you? What are you doing? No more running out with your friends, you gotta study more. Why aren’t you practicing more? What’s wrong with you? And so what that leads us to believe, whether we realize it or not, often subconsciously, is that in order to get the things that I crave, recognition, love, support, I’ve gotta be achieving, I’ve gotta be perfect. And if I’m not, well then I’m gonna criticize myself in the same way that I was criticized growing up. And so those are a few of the ways, there’s many more, but a few of the ways that I see most often self-criticism show up, why it shows up, especially in the youth.

Yeah. And I can remember back in the day, and we see it on TV all the time too, is these examples you gave us. It’s the coach that’s just barking at their kids, barking at their students to run harder, hit harder, whatever it is, go further, which is they want to get the best performance out of their student or their young one. And they think that yelling is the best way to do it. When in reality,

Not every person is wired that way. There might be a select few who do resonate with that. They’re like, yes, I need the coach barking at me. But there’s also those students that, man, you just set up their fight or flight response and they’re now not listening to you at all. They’re like internalizing this dialogue that they’re not good enough and it makes them defeated. They’re not performing even half as well that they were when you started yelling at them too.

So like, I see that example you gave. You gave the social media example, which I think is spot on and it’s so in our face, right? Is the comparison not just for young people, but you and me? I don’t know about you, you see like, oh man, that speaker went out more than me this week. Or that speaker got to fly all the way to Hawaii. Why haven’t I got booked in Hawaii? You know, like all this comparison that kind of hits all of us.

I deeply resonate with this, Matt.

Yeah, mean, I do it still and I’m cognizant of it because a lot of us do it when we don’t have even the awareness that it’s happening. The next step is being aware of it. It makes it a little bit easier, but it’s still difficult. I catch myself doing it all the time. There was one point I had to unfollow the speaker personally because I was like, this shouldn’t be upsetting me, but it is. it is, there’s that like, why not me? Like I know that school, I’ve reached out to them. Why’d they go with them? And you start to internalize as if there’s something wrong with you.

And in reality, that’s not the case. And the other problem with self-criticism is what you just said, which is it activates that stress response, that fight or flight response. And when we get into that state, I mean, I’m sure you can speak to this as well, probably better than I can, but it leads to a whole host of both mental and physical health challenges, which a lot of people don’t realize. Like, it’s not just mental. Like, personally, I used to have a face full of acne. I was chronically stressed.

Now I’m not saying that I’m not gonna attribute everything to the fact that I’ve given myself a little bit more grace and regulated my nervous system as a result for the acne going away. But my skin, I don’t do, my skin routine hasn’t changed, Jake. I still do the same thing for my skin and that’s not much. So I do think that it ends up leading to this cascade effect of a lot of harmful, there’s a lot of harm that comes out of self-criticism that I think we just aren’t necessarily always aware of. And I also think that there’s a lot of myths associated with the flip side, which is self-compassion. And we can go into that, but I think that’s also what propagates a lot of the self-criticism is because, if I’m self-compassionate with myself, well, then I’m soft and all my motivation, my drive is just gonna go away.

Yeah. Okay. I’m glad I was saving that question because I’m like, this is going to be in not every person’s brain, but if you’re watching over young people thinking we do have to guide them, help them experience, like set limits and guardrails, push them to be their best, you know, like those kinds of things that that’s not what you’re saying. You’re not saying we shouldn’t have high expectations or we shouldn’t be coaching young people. It just looks different. And it sounds like you have this platform that shows the power of compassion. And so before we dive into compassion, Matt, I need to know, like, why did you choose this topic? Like ex-banker turned mental health and advocate for this stuff. Like, why this?

You know, it’s a great question. It’s how I open every single talk that I deliver. I say, about all of the things in the world to talk about that I choose these two concepts? It’s my business. I can talk about whatever I want. Why these two things? And the answer is because it changed my life. I used to be very, very critical of myself, which then led to me being critical of others. I was very judgmental of myself. And then again, leading me to be very judgmental of others as well.

I frankly didn’t like the person I saw in the mirror every single day. Like I woke up every morning and was like, like, man, I gotta go do this thing called life again. Like this, this is no fun. And for a little bit more background, I struggled with my sexuality. I should say my relationship with my sexuality. And I didn’t really know who I was. As I got older and I started to become more in tune with who I was.

I saw a problem because I grew up under the belief that to be anything other than straight was wrong, was something to be ashamed of. That’s what was indoctrinated into me, partly by society, but also partly I had friends, parents that were outwardly homophobic. It’s when I was there, I remember when I was young and I didn’t even know who I was at the time, but there was a lot of just negative talk, a disgust around anyone that was not straight.

And so I got hit this crossroads as I’m kind of entering my maybe late high school years into college where I’m like, ⁓ I’ve got these feelings and these feelings aren’t going away. But to be this way is to be wrong. And so I just went to an all out battle and war with myself where every single day, every time I hit the pillow, I was just filled with shame and trying to undo what I knew to be true. And the more that I resisted over the years, the more that I suffered. eventually in June of 2022, I had a breaking point and I said, you know what? I can’t do this anymore. I’m gonna do something that I thought I would never do and I’m gonna seek help. And I started going to therapy for the first time. I remember I took the first therapy session in my sister’s apartment because I lived with one other guy, friend of mine at the time, and I was so ashamed of going to therapy, and I didn’t want him to hear what I was gonna confess. And the only reason I accepted going to therapy is because I knew legally that she couldn’t say anything. And that’s the only reason that I confided that I came out to my therapist, which led to, mean, I was just, was an emotional release on like anything I’ve ever had, of both pain, but also relief.

And that led me on this journey of healing, of healing myself, the parts of myself, my belief system. And as I’ve become more in tune with myself, more self-aware, I’m like, why am I in this corporate banking thing? I really don’t, I know I don’t like this thing. I just didn’t know who I was, so I didn’t know what I did like. That led me to go down the road of, wow, I was actually really hard on myself. And the more that I’ve given myself a little bit of grace, the more ambitious and driven I’ve ever been. I’m like,

That goes against everything I learned about what it meant to be compassionate. So that’s kind how I got to where I am today.

Dang. Was that moment when you did come out, was that you showing compassion for you? And did you see that and how you viewed others too?

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that was the first time that I gave myself just a tiny bit of grace. And through that journey, experiencing so much emotional pain, kind of seemingly all over the span of six months as I kind of started to slowly come out to other people. I just had a newfound sense of empathy for what others were going through because I

Not everybody can relate to my situation, but I do think most can relate to not feeling like they belonged and not feeling like they fit in. And until you go through the depths of that level of darkness, at least for me personally, I just, I wasn’t able to develop that sense of empathy for those around me. And for better or worse, I don’t know that everybody has to go through what I went through, but for me personally, I’ve had a very privileged life.

Like I’m very blessed. grew up with, in a middle upper class family with school paid for and a nice suburban neighborhood and good genes and was always like the popular kids. So like I’ve had a very blessed life and it took me actually going into the darkness to eventually see the light and see the light in others as well.

Wow, that’s powerful. And why? So I guess this goes back to any lessons for our audience to take away, because we’re working with youth. I think young people, just in general, with the way your brain is being developed, you are figuring out who you are. You’re forming that identity until your mid-20s. That’s the way the front of our brain is working. We’re figuring out problem solving, relationship skills.

And so this is an opportunity where they are, they’re probably comparing what other people say they should be versus who they are discovering they are, what their values are, who they are as a person, their upbringing, their culture. They’re trying to fit it in and decide not only who I am, but who am I deciding to be? So this moment is, it kind of can feel like me versus them or me versus the world. How do you go about developing self-compassion if you feel like it’s you against the world? Like, is there?

The Journey to Self-Compassion

That’s a great question. That’s a great question because one of the components of self-compassion is this concept developed by Kristin Neff called Common Humanity, which recognizes that we are all connected because we are all human beings. And that suffering is part of, even when it may not feel like it, is part of the shared human experience, keyword shared.

And the way that I like to share that with others, to illuminate that with those that I speak to is like, raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced shame in your lives. I think we all have. My hands always raise. Raise your hand if you’ve ever made a big mistake or done something that you’re not proud of. Inevitably, every single hand is raised. And that is an example of common humanity as part of self-compassion is recognizing that just because you mess up, you make a mistake, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It doesn’t mean you’re any less worthy.

It just means you’re human like every single one of us. And I think the one that goes into one of the common misconceptions around self-compassion, which is that, well, self-compassion is just like self-pity. But self-pity says, why me? It isolates us. It’s self-centered. And so for me, for much of my life, self-pity was like, why me? Like, why do I have to be this way? Why can’t I just be straight like everybody else? I’m not saying this was rational, but this is what was going through my head.

Like anything else, like they could change this, but I can’t change this part of myself. I’ve tried like, why me? Why do I have to be this way? Not super helpful. Didn’t really help me become the person that I wanted to become to achieve the things I wanted to achieve. Now, self-compassion in that moment, had I given it to myself, would have been, hey, Matt, you sound like you’re really struggling right now. This is hard, understandable. You’re human. What do you need? Need a hug?

You need a different perspective. You need someone to just listen to you. You need to rest. What do you need? And you see the difference in how one is like you’re getting, you’re getting, you’re giving compassion to yourself. You’re allowing yourself not to just deny, like I’m going to feel what’s here, but also understand that I can then take action. What do I need? What can I give myself to alleviate the suffering?

Dang, that’s a big, I guess, like mic drop statement you just made. if you think of, I mean, I’m just going to re-say it for the audience. Self-pity is why me. Self-compassion is what do I need? It’s taking you from a stance of why me? I’m pity, like pity me. I cannot help my situation. Nothing can become better. My life is terrible which is a dangerous place to live. And like you said, it’s based in isolation and it’s a lie. Whereas self-compassion is I’m in a situation, I can do something about it. It’s not a them versus me situation. You’re probably not alone and there are things you can do, people you can have support you, which is a great place to be in and that’s how we’re designed. And so, yeah, I love that simple truth that self-pity is formed on isolation and that self-compassion is formed on the belief that we are not alone and that there are things to make it better. And I would love to talk about more of your work with college students and young people and ask you, since the people listening here also work with young people and maybe they’re being very critical of themselves, what are some things that we can do as leaders, as maybe adult guides in their life to be more supportive and to be more compassionate or to help them develop that lens of self-compassion.

Developing Self-Compassion

Yeah, I I think we can all benefit from being more compassionate to ourselves. I do a little bit of work with corporate organizations as well, and I’ll have a 55, 60 year old man or woman come up to me after and say, wow, I always knew I was hard on myself, but it’s almost like we give ourselves an award for beating ourselves up. And it’s like, I actually didn’t realize that that was hindering my growth, but that was actually stressing me out. And so I think this work applies and the older you get the harder it becomes to start giving yourself compassion and grace. there’s, so to answer your question, there’s three components. We talked through one of them, humanity. The other two are mindfulness and self-kindness. Both of those are great ways to start build self-compassion. So from the perspective of mindfulness, it’s just about being more present. Now we don’t have to love what we might be feeling. Like if we’re feeling emotionally distressed, I’m not sitting here and say you need to love that pain. What I am saying is can you recognize that it’s here and just accept it? Because we can’t be compassionate with ourselves, with those around us, if we don’t acknowledge that there’s something to be compassionate towards. The Latin root of compassion means to suffer with. And so by being compassionate, we are acknowledging that suffering is present.

And so being more mindful, I think we all think about it as like, that means I gotta be sitting in a dark room with a candle lit and Buddhist music playing cross-legged. Like that’s one form of mindfulness. It’s fine. I’ve done it. It’s relaxing. That’s just one form of meditation. Mindfulness is anything that can help bring your body and your mind into the same place. And so yes, it could be meditation, but it can also be just going for a mindful walk.

Where for instead of putting in headphones and listening to a podcast or listening to music or calling a friend, like those things are great at some points, but sometimes just going for a mindful walk with nothing and just doing your best to connect with the present moment. Listening to the birds trip with your ears, feeling the wind smack you in the face, touching the leaves of the tree with your hands, using as many physical senses as you can to ground yourself into the present moment. So that’s one thing you can do.

is just practicing mindfulness. could be something as the next time you do your dishes. Like, don’t also talk to your spouse, your partner, or try to study or listen to a pot, whatever it might be, but just pay attention to the act of doing your dishes, feeling the water hits your hands, you know, moving your dishes from one place to the other. And you’d be surprised how one, quickly, if you don’t practice mindfulness consistently, you’re going to be distracted or like, need to be doing something else, a graph or something else.

But I think if we can start to shift the narrative around what mindfulness is, we can really start to make some headway. Because mindfulness is just about training the mind to focus. That’s it.

Like just the same way we train our, know, we want bigger biceps. What do we do? We all are so, a lot of us are concerned about our physical health and you know, that’s great. But mindfulness is just training the mind. It’s exercise for the mind. The other thing we can do is be a little bit more kind to ourselves. So self-kindness, which I think a lot of people equate with permission, but compassion and permission are not the same thing. So self-kindness is not about self-indulgence.

It’s not about being complacent, lowering our standards, avoiding responsibility because I feel bad about myself. so because I feel bad about myself, I’m going to go bury my face in 45 cupcakes because I feel bad about myself. I’m not going take cupcakes, maybe not 45 of them. But the point is self kindness is about prioritizing our long-term well-being. And I always like to make the analogy with like, all, most of us have pets, a dog. Why don’t we feed our dogs or our cat, whatever it might be every time they’re hungry because we love them. And if we did, we know that that would not be good for their long-term well-being, even though it might provide us a little bit of discomfort in the short term, because of course we love our dogs, we want to give them what they want. So it’s about sacrificing sometimes how we feel in the short term for how we know we want to show up in the long run, because we do it from a place of love. Compassion comes from a place of love. Criticism comes from a place of fear.

Dang, I feel, okay, first of all, my biggest, I’m latching on to what you’re saying. I did not know self-kindness, like that’s right, it’s not indulgence. It’s saying, no, what’s best for you. And I relate to that, you know, as both of us being working with youth, helping with speaking and workshops and coaching and things like that is.

There is the battle of what I want now versus what is good for me. ⁓ What do I want that feels good now versus what’s going to feel good for the rest of my life? And ⁓ that’s a tough decision sometimes. the fact that you’re focusing on, what I’m hearing is you’re focusing on things you normally do or like compassion. I don’t think anyone would argue like compassion is bad. They’d be like, that’s good. How do I do it?

Right? Mindfulness. Yeah, I should be mindful. People might think they’re being mindful, but they’re not because like you said, we’re always distracted. We’re trying to do multiple things. We’re not focused or maybe in the present moment. ⁓ And then being kind might be saying no to something you want right now to say yes to that kindness for the rest of your life. And for the purpose of this and this podcast, is the perfect example is not using that vaping product as a coping mechanism, not using that substance. So I just want to connect for our audience that if you have those students who’s interested in mindfulness, in kindness and compassion, and they have a heart for others, this might be a way to connect those two things. And that’s the reason why they might choose to be substance free or a way that you can bring this back to making healthier choices. Because Matt, my tunnel vision, it always goes back to this, which is, know, helping youth stay away from substances to avoid addiction or potential overdose. So I just appreciate what you’re saying. The other thing that you mentioned though, is compassion is suffering with someone or what did you say?

Practical Strategies for Compassionate Responses

The Latin root means to suffer with. And so by acknowledging that I’m showing compassion, well then we are acknowledging that suffering is present because partly of why I struggled for so long is because I denied what I knew to be true. And we can’t alleviate something that we don’t acknowledge is present. And so that’s why the idea of just accepting to suffer with.

What’s here can be so powerful. Like that’s what I tell students all the time is the first, the most important, the biggest step towards any sort of change you want to make in your life is just awareness that there’s something to change. Because there’s so many of us that identify, well, Matt, that’s just who I am though. I’m just hard on myself. I’m just a critical person. We attach, we attach ourselves, it becomes our identity. And every time we say that, we reinforce that identity.

It becomes a more deeper and deeper belief that we hold about ourselves. And so through mindfulness, we can just become more aware of when that inner voice gets a little crazy, runs a little wild, gets a little irrational. And the next time we feel that, we feel it coming on. We can just take a little step back, practice awareness, detach from that voice just a little bit. So instead of attaching ourselves and the emotions that that then provides, we can just start to observe it.

Don’t judge it, just observe it. What’s it saying? What’s that inner voice saying? Is that true? What if that wasn’t true? What evidence do I have that that’s true? Because the more we do that, the more ownership we can take over our lives, the more we can actually realize, well, my gosh, every time I’m around this person or in this environment, my inner critic starts to get really crazy. And normally that’s because our body’s trying to protect ours itself. It feels a threat.

And so it wants us to stay small or to try to fit in. And so we appease or we try to fit in. So if you can recognize it, my God, every time I’m around Sally or John, get really, my inner critic starts to run wild and I get insecure. Well now look what you can do with that information, but at least you have it. Maybe, maybe those people aren’t serving you anymore. Maybe it’s having a conversation with a friend, someone you trust, but just having awareness can just it’s very eye-opening for people. I think that’s one of the things I get most about this work is eye-opening. And I think that’s why, because it was eye-opening for me.

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s just because Easter was yesterday when we recording this and I’m just like, boom, compassion. Jesus, what an insane example of God in the flesh who should have came down and judged us and said, you’re imperfect, you suck, you’re terrible, there’s no hope for you. Like all the stuff we tell ourselves. And instead our creator says, no, I made you like this for a reason.

I know you deal with this stuff. That’s what humans do. ⁓ Views us as a child, but with compassion suffered for us on the cross and like took on our flaws, our sin for like, for us, paid the ticket for us to be right. And it’s just such a cool example. As I go throughout and I meet incredible people like you, Matt, and we learn about ourselves and about the world. I’m just completely in awe of this like 2000 year old example of one guy who walked the earth that kind of like laid a groundwork for all this stuff. And we might think we have it, right? Like, yeah, I know. Or I think I found out something new. And it’s like, boom, it’s there. It’s compassion. I love the way that you explain it. to leave us, I’m imagining a person who works with young people, right?

Maybe they’ve got someone in their student club, they’re running a prevention club or a mental health club, and they’ve got that student who’s really critical. And they give that the answer or they’re really hard on themselves. And they say, ⁓ man, I just suck at this or no, I’m not good at doing that or that’s just the way I am. Matt, what are some things? How can we respond? Like what’s a sentence we can say? What’s the response that is compassionate?

Or maybe not that. What’s the response we can use that helps them be compassionate to themselves? How do we respond to help them do that?

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And I think it depends on the person, the scenario, but generally speaking, think one thing you can do kind of universally just to kind of illuminate, bring more awareness to the problem is identify whatever that limiting thought that belief is. ⁓ I’m so stupid for not figuring this out. Okay, let’s just, we can write it down, identify it and

We’ve now identified what our reaction is to it, which is I should, I’m ashamed because I can’t figure this out. But then ask that student, well, what would you say to a friend if they came up to you in this scenario? And they brought this to you. How would you respond because inevitably the answer is going to be far different from how they respond to themselves. And just by doing that, you’ve, you’ve illuminated the problem to them. It’s like, what would you, what would a good coach say to you? Like that’s who I want in my corner. And so I think as an exercise, as simple as that can be really powerful. That’s how I open most of my talks that I give is imagine this scenario where your best friend’s suffering and they’ve come to you for support. How would you show up? What would you say to them? Your energy, your tone of voice?

Conclusion and Resources

Okay, now envision that same scenario, same thing, but this time it’s happening to you. How are you showing up for yourself? What types of things are you saying to yourself? Same type of deal. And then I asked people, let’s see a show of hands, who here treats them, their friends, their loved ones, their best friend with more support than themselves. And inevitably almost every single hand goes up.

Including myself in a lot of cases definitely when I was sitting in their shoes and it’s still in some cases now because it’s programmed into it so I think understanding that like I still am critical of myself sometimes That’s normal but just understanding that that it’s normal and Because I love myself. I’m going to respond instead with compassion so I think that’s what I would say is doing a little exercise where yo replace themselves in that situation with their friend and ask how they respond if their friend came up to them and then offer them the invitation of What if you gave that to yourself and at least that way you can figure out well No, because that’s and you get it get a deeper sense into their belief system where it might be coming from and how you can then work with them from there yeah, that’s super helpful. I can actually see myself doing that, you know, and that’s easy to implement. And if someone is being like that in front of me, I could absolutely say, oh yeah, if your friend were dealing with this problem we’re having right now, yeah, what would you say to them? And then have that switch of why, well, how are you retreating yourself differently? Yeah.

That’s 100%. Anything to normalize what they’re going through. Because most of the time it is just that, it’s a human experience. And so the more that you can normalize the fact that they’re having just that, the more seen they feel, the more they’re like, oh wow, yeah, I don’t have to be this hard on myself. And you just see it time and time again. I mean, I’ve seen it from students.

I’ve seen it in podcasts, like famous podcasters. I’ve seen it in people I work with that are much older. Like this work is agnostic for a reason. It’s not your fault that you are this way. A lot of times it was indoctrinated by society, by cultural norms, by again, caretakers, teachers, whoever it might be. So understand that it’s normal and because we love ourselves, because we want to show up better for ourselves with more love so we can show up better for those around us.

I’m going to choose to give myself a little grace, not permission, not to indulge, but so that I can then ask myself the question, what do I need? How can I make this situation better? What can I learn from this situation?

Matt, this is good. Dude, I’ve had so much fun chatting with you about this and I feel like we barely scratched the surface. So if people want to learn more about you, about self-compassion, the work that you do, which I saw on your website, right? It’s speaking, workshops, training, coaching, and this is your lane. ⁓ Where can they go to find out more about you?

Yeah, you nailed it, man. Speaking, workshops, training, coaching, mattkavaches.com. You can also shoot me an email at mattkavaches.com. do a lot of, I almost exclusively work with ⁓ college students. I do a lot of work with high schools, nonprofits here in Chicago. I mentor a high school sophomore, junior that I’ve had through an organization since he was an incoming freshmen. So I’ve seen his kind of journey through. So this is what I do. I’d love to support the organization or yourself, but Jake, thanks for the time. is truly is a wonderful conversation and I can really feel that you were listening to me the entire time.

Yeah, of course, Matt. you’re doing great work. And for everyone who’s listening to this, you are doing incredible work. I hope that this talk was valuable for you. Again, if you think of somebody who needs to hear this, please share this episode with them. If you love the podcast, please leave a review and a rating. If you don’t love the podcast, skip that. And then as always, just keep up the amazing work that you’re doing in your community because you are changing lives you’re making a difference and sometimes we might get critical of ourselves and our job. And what I’m hearing from Matt today is that is normal, that’s okay, but we can practice these things to realize that we are making a difference. We’d be a little bit more compassionate to ourselves, especially when you’re doing world changing work. So everyone, this has been a great time and we’ll see you next Monday on the Drug Prevention Power Hour.