Self Compassion

We all know how to be kind. It’s something we’re taught to be from a young age. Many of us are good at it, and it comes easily with those we love and care about.

Kindness can look like many things. Here are some words from a thesaurus that are associated with kindness:

• affection

• understanding

• good will

• graciousness

• tenderness

• courtesy

• patience

• tolerance

• goodness

• sweetness

• benevolence

• sympathy

• gentleness

• grace

• altruism

• decency

• cordiality

• hospitality

• decency

• humanity

I wonder which of these words you like the most? I wonder if you can think of times you’ve been like this, shown this, done these things in the last week.

Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield says: “If your compassion doesn’t include yourself, it is incomplete”. We’re all good at being kind to others, but some of us are less good at being kind to ourselves. Self compassion is treating yourself like you’d treat a good friend.

Look back through that list of words… what would it look like to show these things to yourself? What does it mean today to treat yourself with gentleness, tolerance, patience?

These are all ways of being kind. And we need to learn to art of being kind to ourselves.

Spend some time with one of the words above. Imagine being like that with someone else, and then turn it around and consider how you can be like that with yourself.

If you’d like to listen to an audio version of this, use the MP3 below.