“One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.” ~Bell Hooks
When embracing the art of self-nurturing we learn to treat ourselves like a dear friend. At first, this aspiration may feel unattainable since many women hold limiting beliefs that expect them to take care of everyone, please everyone, and do it all perfectly. We offer so little grace to ourselves for being human, and instead judge, criticize, and hold ourselves to impossibly high standards. At the same time, we are encouraging, understanding, and supportive to our family members, friends, and colleagues. We easily extend compassion and kindness to them, but struggle to demonstrate that same compassion and kindness to ourselves.
Our critical self-talk runs on autopilot and continually undermines our confidence and belief in ourselves. And if we make a mistake or don’t live up to our high standards, our judgmental and critical inner voice gets very loud increasing our anxiety about the mistake. We might even start thinking that we are a mistake. This creates a negative feedback loop as we blame and shame ourselves for making the mistake, then criticizing ourselves about it, and then feeling bad. The suffering we cause ourselves by treating ourselves so poorly is heartbreaking. If you have ever witnessed someone you love beating themselves up for a mistake you know how painful it is and yet we do this same thing to ourselves daily.
What I have learned from cultivating a self-nurturing practice is that we have the power to unlearn these unkind ways of being with ourselves. We can invite in self-compassion to be the salve on our own broken hearts. We can recognize that self-compassion is a critical way to transform our inner critic into our inner mentor, sharing wisdom and insights instead of the constant negative feedback. Over time, we will respond to ourselves with kindness and tenderness and can stay curious about the challenging parts of ourselves instead of rejecting them. With self-compassion we can begin to love and accept ourselves and embrace our humanity with loving kindness. Self-compassion is contagious as it inspires others to respond to themselves with more kindness, and it radiates out to all we interact with creating a more compassionate world.
As with all self-nurturing practices, developing self-compassion will take practice and commitment. On this journey of befriending ourselves, self-compassion is an essential companion as we learn to be more loving and kinder to ourselves. I like to remind myself and my clients that this journey of self-nurturing is about progress not perfection and it has become my self-compassion mantra. The more I have woven self-compassion into my life, the more nurturing and kinder I have become to myself. Self-compassion is healing and reminds us of our wholeness, reinforcing that I made a mistake, but I am not a mistake. Choosing to be compassionate to ourselves, empowers us to turn mistakes into lessons, which nurtures our growth mindset and the healing possibility of treating ourselves better. Embracing our humanity by choosing self-compassion, helps us know we are not alone and normalizes our experience.
I saw an image recently of a heart holding a flower to give to a brain with the caption “Talk a littler nicer to yourself today.” When you choose to talk to yourself a little nicer, you will begin the process of embracing a more compassionate approach to your life. Your loving heart can influence your judging critical brain and you can rewire your brain with self-compassion. Practicing self-compassion can be the spark that guides you to be more self-loving each and every day.
Here are five ways you can commit to self-compassion:
- Listen to your body with love, gratitude, and rest. So many of us criticize and judge our bodies for not looking like we want or operating the way we want them to. We forget what a miracle our bodies are and stop listening to the messages our bodies have to share with us. Today choose to practice self-compassion by listening to your body with love and gratitude and give yourself permission to rest.
- Acknowledge and affirm your emotions. Choosing to treat ourselves like a dear friend means we learn to acknowledge and affirm our emotions. We often reject how we are feel or apologize for having emotions instead of expressing our love and support to ourselves. One of the best ways we can demonstrate self-compassion is by acknowledging and affirming how we are feeling. Today choose to acknowledge how you are feeling the way you would for a dear friend and say to yourself, “this is hard and I am here for you.”
- Send love to yourself when you criticize and compare. When we criticize or compare ourselves to others we lose our connection to ourselves. We feed our unworthiness with comparison and find more things to judge and criticize ourselves about. But what if instead of judgement you met yourself with love. Today when you find yourself comparing and judging yourself, pause, and invite love to talk with your critical thoughts. Notice how communicating with yourself as love would can feel nurturing and supportive.
- Be gentle with yourself when you make a mistake. We are especially vulnerable to our judgement and critical thoughts when we make a mistake. We can make the impact of the mistake much more destructive when we beat ourselves up about it. Our critical self-talk not only undermines our potential learning from the mistake, but it reinforces our unworthiness that keeps us stuck. Today, choose to be gentle with yourself when you make a mistake. Remind yourself that this is about progress not perfection and ask yourself what you learned from this mistake. Offer yourself tenderness and kindness as you pick yourself back up and start anew.
- Celebrate your compassionate choices. Acknowledging the intentional ways that you nurture self-compassion in your life is so important! Start a practice of reflecting at the end of the day on the ways you were compassionate to yourself. Identify and celebrate all of them no matter how big or small. Each time you choose self-compassion you are reinforcing that you love and value yourself, and are becoming your own best friend. Acknowledging our progress, reinforces the importance of being self-compassionate and provides a reward to encourage us to continue.
Committing to self-compassion will positively impact your life in miraculous ways! You have the ability to choose self-compassion moment by moment, so remember progress not perfection. If you find yourself criticizing yourself, pause, take a breath, and choose a kinder approach. What would you say to a dear friend? Then say it to yourself!
May you commit each day to being compassionate to yourself, as you nurture peace in the world from the inside out!
Sending you peace, love and gratitude, Kelley
