How to Be Kind to Yourself

Can self-kindness transform your life? Discover the groundbreaking insights and practical strategies that can help you shift away from relentless self-criticism and embrace a more compassionate, balanced approach to living. In a society that often glorifies competition and perfection, it’s crucial to understand the universal nature of suffering and our shared human imperfections. By doing so, we can begin to treat ourselves with the same kindness and care we would offer a friend in pain.

This episode is your guide to cultivating self-compassion through mindfulness and psychological flexibility. Learn how to become more attuned to your emotions, mind, and body, and explore the power of observing your thoughts and feelings without being overwhelmed by them. We discuss the importance of acknowledging and validating our pain, rather than fighting against it, and how this acceptance can lead to a more fulfilling and balanced life. Whether you're navigating life's challenges or simply seeking to improve your relationship with yourself, this episode offers valuable insights and tools to help you on your journey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Many of us struggle with being kind to ourselves. Some of us may not even realize it and we are so used to the critical voice that runs the show within the mind. So being unkind to ourselves may become natural. But it's not our fault. It's how we've been conditioned by society. The Western society is very competitive. It pushes us to try to be better than the next person. However, the reality is that the human condition is imperfect, it's not perfect and that none of us are perfect. So when we are trying to reach perfection, we are trying to reach an unreachable ideal.

Speaker 1: 0:43

The Western world also plants this message that strong individuals are stoic and silent during their own suffering. When reality is, we need to pay attention to and respond to our suffering, to feel better, to live better and to move forward from setbacks and challenges. That is the truth, and the reality, After all, isn't being kind to ourselves, acknowledging our pain, acknowledging our suffering. Wouldn't it be unkind to see an individual walking by in front of you in severe, severe pain and you just ignoring them and walking by? Well, in ignoring your own pain, you're doing the exact same to yourself, and don't you deserve it to stop yourself and say let's take a deep breath. This is really hard. The Western culture demands that we be above average and special, which leads us to compare ourselves to others and leads ourselves to ignore our pain. As we all know, comparing ourselves is a never-ending game, as there is always going to be someone who is more intelligent, more clever, more special. So this need to be perfect, this need to be above average and this need to compare ourselves to others leads us to be incredibly hard on ourselves. It also leads us to ignore the universal nature of suffering, that is, we all suffer, and to be human is to not to be perfect. So how do we move away from being hard on ourselves to being kind to ourselves? How do we move towards being kind to ourselves? That is the question.

Speaker 1: 2:31

First, it is important to recognize the suffering you are experiencing. Sometimes this is easy to pick out. Other times it's more difficult. In a society where everything is so fast-paced and we are expected to fight through pain, we may become numb to the pain and may fail to realize our suffering in the moment. We may start to become numb to our suffering and we may ignore it, and so it really becomes important to become in tune with our emotions, our mind and our body to really recognize the pain and suffering we are experiencing. To do a mind and body and even spiritual scan every once in a while as a routine practice, To really be in sync with ourselves rather than being focused on being in sync with the fast-paced Western world. This switch must be made from being in sync with the fast-paced Western world to being in sync with our own mind, body, spirit and soul. That is the true goal.

Speaker 1: 3:43

The sad part of life is sometimes we are hardest on ourselves during our most challenging experiences and life challenges. Sometimes we are the hardest on ourselves when we are going through incredible pain, or sometimes we may even ignore our pain. To be in tune with the fast-moving world because the world never stops the reality is to move forward in life in a manner that is beneficial to us. We must give our pain our presence. We must look at our pain, observe it and allow it to be felt. Yet when we feel pain, we often focus on fixing it or getting rid of the pain or the thing causing the pain. However, the more we fight against the pain, the more difficult it becomes. So instead, when going through a challenging, painful time, you must practice the art of mindfulness acknowledging the pain, accepting the reality and validating the pain. A lack of acceptance and more resistance only gets in the way of your self-compassion for yourself. A mindfulness approach can be helpful to deal with the critical thoughts.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Psychological flexibility is an interesting concept and a very helpful concept. It's your capacity to create a curious and open-ended relationship with your own thoughts and feelings. You don't need to believe your thoughts such as I'm a failure, I'm an embarrassment, I'm alone, no one loves me to be the absolute truth. So what you do is you become curious about your thoughts. You curiously look at the thoughts and feelings without being overtaken by them, like a person standing back watching the waves in the ocean coming back and forth without being overtaken by the ocean current. Aside from approaching our thoughts with psychological flexibility or curiosity, we must also pay attention to how we react to ourselves. There is always a little dialogue that goes on within our mind in which we talk to ourselves.

Speaker 1: 6:06

We need to evaluate this voice that talks to ourselves. Is it kind, compassionate, or is it mean, strict, condescending and rude? Can you recognize whose voice it is from your youth? Perhaps it's the voice of someone when you were younger, someone who was overly critical of you when you were younger. Recognize that voice and tell it in a loving and gentle manner that you understand that you needed it to survive in your younger years. But now, now it's okay to be kinder and gentler to yourself. You don't need to be judging or critical of that voice, but you need to understand why it turned into the critical voice in the first place. You need to recognize that it was molded from its environment. Recognize that it was molded from its environment, and so the current internal state of the loud voice is not its fault. Then what? Then? You need to have the kinder, self-compassionate voice raise its volume, while having the critical voice lower its volume. Doing so won't happen quickly. It will take time. You will need to constantly engage in reflection by tuning in and observing the chatter in your mind and tuning the volume accordingly.

Speaker 1: 7:38

You should also hold on to yourself through the pain. That is incredibly important. Tender self-compassion is also your capacity to hold yourself in a comforting manner that validates the pain you're feeling. At that time, Remember the common humanity of the experience, that you're not alone in this pain, that every human being experiences pain and suffering. When you hold yourself with these responses, it's as if you're a mother, gently, in a nurturing manner, holding a newborn child In a similar way. This is the way you hold yourself when you show yourself tender self-compassion. When the baby screams and cries out loud, we continue holding it with the same tender love and care. And in a similar way, we hold on to the intense and disturbing emotions with love, through tender self-compassion.

Speaker 1: 8:32

Touch can be incredibly healing. You can hold yourself and rock back and forth or just give yourself a little hug. There is power in touch, as it releases oxytocin in the brain and provides a sense of security and soothes distressing emotions. We can also think about the situation from the perspective of a friend, of a close and dear friend. Ask yourself what would your friend say to you when finding out about the challenges or the pain you're experiencing. What would be some encouraging and supportive words that might come from your friend? How would you feel to receive those warm and kind words from your friend? How would you feel to receive those warm and kind words from your friend? Allow yourself to feel that warmth that would come from reading or hearing those kind words from your friend. You can also respond to your pain, when you detect it, in healthy ways such as taking a warm bath to soothe yourself, going for a walk, petting an animal, drinking some warm hot chocolate. In these ways, you are providing care to yourself and meeting your own needs, without even realizing it. The key is being in sync with the suffering of your mind, body and soul, rather than being detached from it.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Self-esteem focuses on comparisons, being perfect, being better than others based on specific characteristics, concerns with whether or not we are meeting expectations. Tender self-compassion is different. It focuses on loving ourselves despite the circumstances we find ourselves in. There is no requirement to be above average, perfect or special when it comes to tender self-compassion. Through self-compassion, we no longer try to live a perfect and ideal life. Instead, the focus is shifted on caring for ourselves. And isn't that better To care for ourselves during happy, great moments as well as challenging times of suffering? Don't be the one who ignores your own pain or looks the other way and walks away. After all, who is more deserving of kindness and loving self-compassion than yourself? So, when you feel you failed or experienced a challenging life event, take a deep breath in and out. Remind yourself. You deserve kindness, understanding and compassion, just as anyone else does. Remind yourself you are worthy and deserving of compassion. You deserve it. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please press like, review and follow.