Self-compassion

Have you ever given yourself a shellacking for some painful failure to perform or your inability to live up to your expectations? We all experience those meltdowns when a mistake we made caused us to think less of ourselves…but was this reckoning healthy or did it just plunge us into an internal meltdown?

According to research done by Kristen Neff, Ph.D there is nothing motivating about beating yourself up because you failed. i remember growing up one of my father’s favorite expressions was “It’s not the end of the world.” He would use this line to defuse some situation we considered disastrous. If we had gotten a bad grade or broken something beloved by another family member he would always caution us to understand that pitfalls were just a part of life. If we wallowed in self-loathing instead of moving on it would only plunge us into an agony of self doubt  which he thought was a waste of time

So i was pleasantly surprised to find that self-compassion is just as rewarding and maybe even healthier than high self esteem.  According to Neff there are three components of self-compassion.

Self-kindness: Being kind, gentle and understanding with yourself when you’re suffering.

Common humanity: Realizing you are not alone in your struggles. When we’re struggling, we tend to feel especially isolated. We think we’re the only ones to experience loss, make mistakes, feel rejected or fail. But it is these very struggles that are part of our shared experience as humans.

Mindfulness: Observing life as it is, without being judgmental or suppressing your thoughts and feelings.

One of the things my father’s line “It’s not the end of the world,” taught us was to understand that yep we made a mistake, we are embarrassed and vulnerable. Luckily, he and my mom gave us an amazing ability to bounce back. That miracle of self-compassion, instead of making us feel bitter and wounded gave us a surprising fortitude to pluck ourselves off the ground and move on.

According to Wikipedia “self-compassionate individuals experience emotional resilience, social connectedness, optimism, happiness, and life satisfaction and seem to have less self-criticism, depression, anxiety and disordered eating attitudes. Self-compassion offers the same mental health benefits as self-esteem, but with fewer of its drawbacks such as narcissism, ego-defensive anger, inaccurate self-perceptions, self-worth contingency or social comparison.”

According to Neff there is an easier way to self-motivate. Instead of criticizing yourself ceaselessly, forgive yourself and prove that this was just a small glitch in the whole rest of your life. Leave all those negative thoughts behind…its not the end of the world.

See ya next week.