When you fail, your self-esteem can take a hit, but self-compassion will still support you. This is important because failure is our best teacher.
Self-compassion is a true and stable friend; it helps you when you're suffering.Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive. In conjunction with her colleague, Dr.
Chris Germer, she developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion and co-founded the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, which offers self-compassion training in a variety of formats. Drs. Neff and Germer co-authoredTeaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals,Yes. Self-esteem is really an estimation of worth. It’s a judgment or an evaluation. We know that, psychologically, it’s better to have high self-esteem than low self-esteem for mental health. The problem is, how do you get your high self-esteem? Most people get it in a comparative way. In other words, in order to feel good about yourself, you need to feel special and above average. We’re constantly jockeying for position to try to feel superior to others in some way. That’s one problem. Another big problem is that self-esteem is unstable because it’s typically contingent. It depends on success. It’s like a fair-weather friend—it’s there for you sometimes, but it often deserts you when you need it most . Self-compassion is linked to how we are with ourselves when we’re suffering. Are we kind? Are we warm? Are we supportive? Or are we harsh and judgmental? Importantly, what makes compassion different from pity is a sense ofI feel separate from the rest of the world. Compassion, by definition, includes a sense of connectedness to something larger than ourselves. Those are the major differences.I call it a true friend, a stable friend. When you fail or make a mistake, maybe your self-esteem takes a hit. You can still be there for yourself in a compassionate way. This is really important because we know that failure is our best teacher. If we’re lost in. Then we think, what can I learn from this situation? How can I grow from this? This attitude is just a lot healthier all around.. I learned about self-compassion when I was learning Buddhism in a Thich Nhat Hanh sangha. Thich Nhat Hanh always talked a lot about self-compassion, even more explicitly than a lot of other teachers. Mindfulness is necessary in the sense that you have to acknowledge, and be present with, your own pain in order to give yourself compassion, as opposed to what I call over-identifying with it. We usually do one of two things when difficult emotions arise. Either we ignore it, or we do the opposite: We identify with it. When we ignore emotions, it’s as if a friend called you and you didn’t pick up their call. You couldn’t give your friend compassion. Sometimes we don’t pick up our own phone call. We’re hurting, we’re feeling badly about something, and we don’t even go there. It’s just too much.what’s happening. Then we start to exaggerate things. Not only did I make a mistake, I am the biggest screw-up in the history of the world, that type of thing. We need to be able to have the balance of mindfulness. It’s just like, “Oh, wow, that hurts. I really made a mistake.” Painful, but it doesn’t mean, again, that I, but neither do we avoid or overly minimize. Then the second component is the warm quality of the response. Sometimes people who have a mindfulness practice will be aware that they just had a difficult thought or feeling. Then all they do is give space to it. They try not to. As mammals, we’re designed to feel safe and secure when our parents or caregivers show us this warmth and care. When we give ourselves this warmth and care, we also help ourselves feel safe. Then the third element—and I think this is what differentiates my point of view—is the sense of interconnectedness. If I pity you, Mark, I’m feeling sorry for you. There’s a sense of separation. If I have compassion, it’s like, “I’ve been there, Mark. I’ve experienced something similarly.” In self-compassion, we do the same thing for ourselves. We frame our experience in light of the shared human experience.It’s like clockwork! In every culture we’ve looked at, the same misgivings come up. People think of compassion as being soft and squishy. I suspect it’s partly due toroles, because compassion traditionally is in the female domain, and females are seen as weaker. I don’t know, but the idea is that it’s weak. The research shows it’s exactly the opposite. If we have our own back, if we’re warm, supportive, and feel interconnected and present when we’re going through a difficult time, we’re much more likely to get through the difficulty than if we’re cold to ourselves. It’s obvious, but people don’t recognize that. Another misunderstanding is that self-compassion is selfish. Partly because our culture says you should always be thinking of other people. People say, “Oh, if you want to be happy, then don’t think about yourself so much.” That message makes me uncomfortable because it’s like a zero-sum game. If you have only five units of compassion, do you give three to yourself? You’re only going to have two left over. That's a complete misunderstanding of how it works. The more our heart is open, the more we’re in touch with compassion, the more resources we have available to give other people. Self-compassion is what allows us to have the resources to care for others. That’s one thing. Another big misunderstanding is that it just means letting yourself off the hook. Sometimes that’s a compassionate thing to do. But people misinterpret it to mean that you should go easy on yourself even when the healthier thing to do would be to kick yourself in the butt and say, “You've got to go do something!” What we know from the literature is that people who are more self-compassionate don’t always go easy on themselves. They’re more likely to exercise, go to the doctor, take care of themselves, do the difficult stuff because they care. Still, the number one block to self-compassion by far—there are people who’ve done research on this—is the belief that we need to be hard on ourselves to motivate change.is the author of nine books and founder of The Seekers Forum, a community for self-inquiry. Visit him at theseekersforum.com.Being overly polite might seem kind, but it often leads to problems anyway, in relationships, with friends, and at work.Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
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