In today's reflections, I am back-tracking a couple of weeks to one of my last adventures of 2025.

A couple of days before New Year's Eve, I found myself on a train journey to Ely in Cambridgeshire. I was taking advantage of a window of opportunity for a meeting with someone who was visiting family there. I felt a mixture of excitement and nervousness. For I was on special mission: I was potentially going to be making a very big purchase - a handpan!

A handpan is a metal dome-shaped percussion instrument, skilfully crafted by hand, with a series of notes arranged in a circle around the central note (ding), and played with the hands. It looks like a flying saucer, and has a mesmerising ethereal tone to match its other-worldly looks.

I first saw and heard a handpan fifteen years ago, and it was love at first sight. I was captivated by the meditative quality of the sounds and by the feelings they evoked in me. A few years ago I started to dream about owning one but 'put myself off' with various thoughts, 'it's very expensive', 'you've never played a musical instrument' 'you're not musical'. This time round a different voice came to the fore, along the lines of ‘Go for what you love'. And in a wonderful moment of self-kindness, I decided to do just that. I researched different makers and was drawn to one in particular, and fortuitously he had two pans available that he could show me. Hence my trip.

It's hard to describe my experience of seeing and hearing the pans for the first time. They were both stunning. One had eleven notes, and the other nine, and each had slightly different tones and qualities. One (the 'Celtic') Dan described as the 'better pan'...he felt it was a perfect example, while the other (the 'Kurd') had a slight 'fault’ but so small as to be imperceptible when being played. Dan played each one and then it was over to me. It was really moving to touch the cool metal of these shiny golden instruments for the first time and to hear the evocative sounds. Amazing.

However, it didn't take long for me to feel overwhelmed and start to go to and fro in my mind about which I liked best. My vision that I would 'instantly know which was for me' was not happening! Although the process of choosing was uncomfortable, I eventually found myself blurting out 'this one' to the Kurd. But any sense of celebration was quickly dulled by my mind's chatter of self-doubt, 'You should have got the other one’, accompanied by a feeling of panic that I'd made a big mistake.

Luckily, I recognised this as a recurring pattern for me (particular after a large purchase) and was able to talk kindly to myself, seek support from loved ones and sink into a warm bubbly bath at my hotel! It took an hour or so but eventually feelings of delight and deep gratitude bubbled up - I had a beautiful handpan!The next morning, I got up early for a lovely walk by the river... and was very thankful that the outer and inner landscape now both felt peaceful.

This week's self-kindness invitation is to recognise any recurrent patterns of thoughts and feelings that undermine your confidence in yourself, and to bring as much self-compassion and loving-kindness to yourself as you can, and find whatever ways you can to restore your balance. Good luck.