Self Compassion

Think of the person in your life who you extend the most amount of love, affection, and grace toward. How kind are you to this person? How forgiving of their faults?

Now, I want you to think of yourself. How often do you turn this type of love, affection, and grace inward? Why is it that we are so hard on ourselves that we do not afford ourselves the same treatment reserved for those we love so dear?

For Christmas, Aaron gifted me with the wellness tracker that I had hinted about months prior. I had almost forgotten about it until it arrived in a beautifully wrapped package under the tree. One of the benefits about this specific tool is that it provides you with a myriad of guided meditations. There are many different themes to choose from: Present Moment, Internal Compass, Deep Sleep, Inner Peace, and my favorite – Compassion.

The Compassion meditation is one of the hardest for me. Mostly because it is all about what I talked about at the beginning of this blog – having compassion for yourself.

I am the first to admit that I am unreasonably hard on myself. My natural instinct is to strive for perfection and to not let anyone down. Let’s unpack this concept – shall we?

Perfection:

This is IMPOSSIBLE. No human is perfect, let alone me. I am as flawed as they come. While it is not necessarily a bad thing to strive for perfection, it is to expect that you will actually reach it. I prefer to strive to do my best. And, my best includes flaws.

I have learned to be OK with the mistakes that come along with having human flaws. To embrace them, apologize for them, and to learn from them.

By embracing them, you will not try to hide them, which in the end just makes things worse. When the mistake is eventually discovered by someone else, this can lead to a worse outcome than if you had simply admitted to the mistake.  This has been a hard lesson for me to learn, specifically in my professional world, but it has served me well.

When you have identified a mistake, the best course of action is to apologize. The sooner, the better. This action accomplishes two key things: 1) it lets others know that the mistake was made and 2) it lets them know you are as flawed as they are. It is a unifying action. There is a key thing to remember in this process though, make sure you forgive yourself just as the other person is forgiving you. Do not continue to hold this over your head.

Lastly, I don’t know about you – but when I make a mistake I never want to do it again. I learn that the next time, I need to be on the lookout for what I failed to see the first time around.

By taking these simple steps when behaving in an extremely human way, you are extending compassion toward yourself. And you deserve it.