Developing Greater Self-Compassion

A few months back, the pandemic was unimaginable to most human beings. A few months back, you had the liberty to take responsibility of blaming yourself because prolonged recession had made blaming others or blaming adversity, hopelessly ineffective. As human beings, we are often tuned into the habit of blaming. Either, we blame fate or we blame ourselves. The timing of the COVID19 crisis has been such that many have got tired of blaming external factors and arrived to the obvious choice of self –loathing.

Then again, why blame at all? Why not practice objectivity and cultivate the emotional intelligence that yields progressive actions? In this time of isolation, you could learn to show yourself kindness and remove the habitual blaming from your life entirely. The following tips could help.

1. Assess Your Influence: The ongoing lock-down has thrust you into limiting your choices, physically and psychologically. It is time you accept your current condition, things that you can influence and impact, and most importantly, the fact that you cannot achieve the best results with all these restrictions. You do not have complete access to the unconditional support of friends and family or the tools that give you confidence. The fact that you have identified your limitations, make you eligible to find solutions and alternatives. The assessment of influence is a practice of self-discovery but it limits your context and prevents you from sinking into thoughts that may make you hard on yourself. Furthermore, you do not presume yourself as the cause of things beyond your control. It is possible that you may blame yourself for losing control or influence and connect it with multiple instances of failure, but an honest assessment may help you realize that the instances of critical lapses by you were very few and far between. In fact, things are not as simple as they look and the best place to start is with you. 

2. Try to Empathise with Yourself: Whenever you feel the need to self-loathe, do the opposite and be soft on yourself. You are capable of making mistakes as well as correcting them. When you do make mistakes, the blame game is a distraction that can prevent you from achieving a timely correction. Empathy is an emotional response and you can direct it towards yourself. Imagine yourself as someone with whom you need to build trust and foster a relationship. You can only do that by giving yourself the benefit of any doubts and not belittling yourself if the challenges look insurmountable.

3. Write or Record a Journal of Learning: Adversity and failure can be great teachers. Does this sound too preachy? Well, it is quite actionable. If you write or record your thoughts about life’s challenges, try to elaborate on focal points of learning other than yourself. Highlight things that you can change instantly and mention empathy, kindness and compassion as behavioral practices that you can do every day.

4. Be Creative: Creativity isn’t about being artistic, but about creating an experience. Surely, there must be many instances in life when you were creative about a relation or an interaction and experienced joy from something that most people believed to be ugly or unwanted. What if you could create such an experience with yourself, especially when you are feeling down and need some self-belief? Speaking of experience, you could exercise, cook, clean, garden, croon etc, without judging yourself for a change. Become creative with your daily routine and blend self-improvement with the occasional guilty pleasure and a new experience.

5. Practice Compassion: Most people around you are undergoing tremendous psychological stress. If you are finding it hard to be kind to yourself, maybe you need to first practice being compassionate to others. Reach out to people you worry about, listen to them and empathize. The important sense of our connectedness is reaffirmed using this technique. It in essence helps us to alter the paradigm of our perceived problems within the ‘bigger-picture ‘perspective. At the same time, it helps us to build our social-support networks that are invaluable as far as our well-being is concerned.  

6. Affirm Positivity: Another technique is the use of self-releasing statements. Have you ever applied positive affirmations in your life? Maybe they just don’t feel natural or you may as well think they may not be able to reach your inner self critic in a level that is subconscious. If this happens to be the case, you may consider trying to use what is known as releasing statements. These statements are closely related to exercises in self-kindness and self-forgiveness and thus tap into the concept of mindfulness; the concept of detached non-judgment. Whenever you end up thinking in negative ways, like ‘ I am such a terrible and horrible person for being upset’, try releasing yourself from the feeling by turning it around into a positive one, like ‘I feel upset and it is ok’.

7. Ignore the Need for Validation: This is a word of caution. While you practice compassion with others and hope for their affirmation, it is critical that you do not depend on their validation. There is a very thin line between enabling advice and disabling opinion. A lot of it depends on your ability to be thick skinned to social pressures. Instead, try to lead by example and motivate people to be self-compassionate. This way, you can transform the quid-pro-quo of validation to that of psychological reinforcement.

8. Optimise Your Diet and Sleep: Make sure you are content with yourself and without self-malice before every meal and especially before you go to bed. Get good sleep and healthy food on a daily basis. Sleep when you are tired, not when you are sad or angry and curb your hunger in between regular meals. Consequently, you will see a significant improvement in your health, confidence and self-view.

9. Seek Psychological Expertise: The aforesaid tips need expert guidance and supervision to yield sustainable results. Even if they help you achieve some level of self –compassion, COVID 19 is a stark reminder of how fragile our minds can be. A qualified mental health expert can help you develop a more resolve, along with self-compassion.

If you or your organisation would like further advice on this subject, please contact me, Richard Reid, on +44 7624 499 511 or visit our website here

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