Category: Self-compassion

Once is enough

1 Comment

Self-compassion is a favorite focus of mine–with the goal that we all want to beat ourselves up a little less each day. In our human habit of black and white thinking, there’s the tendency to think that means letting ourselves off the hook for any mistakes. That would be dysfunctional, unhealthy, like we’re getting away with proverbial murder.

It is healthy to evaluate our failures in order to correct our course and grow. But need to punish or judge ourselves, for character building, exists once. But only once. Would you have a criminal punished again and again? Isn’t that what we do when we relentlessly chastise ourselves for our human failings?

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz addresses this human tendency to make ourselves pay for a mistake thousands of times. Other creatures make a mistake, learn from it, and move on. True justice, says Ruiz, is paying only once for an error. True injustice is repeatedly punishing ourselves, through guilt, shame, and self-derogatory talk.

When I was a teenager, learning to drive, we had a three foot diameter maple tree on the absolute edge of our home’s driveway. This tree abutted the black top–no grass for buffering error. Backing the car out of the driveway meant the tree loomed and teased, begging me to scrape up against it, every time. Most of the time I drove my dad’s VW Beetle, so it was easy to miss the tree. After I’d been driving some months, my dad let me drive the big fancy sedan, necessary to haul our little Sunfish sailboat, to the local lake. He was so worried about me taking the big family car and driving an hour away, boat on top. I promised I’d be so careful, and I worried all day, even making my friends walk farther across the hot parking lot in bare feet, boat in the air, so I could park FAR away from other cars. All went well. No scrapes for the car, all the way to the lake and back. We unloaded the boat, and I had to back the big car out of the drive once more to let my sister out of the drive with the VW. The sickening sound of the driver’s side front fender on that tree, on this final backing, is forever burned in my brain. As is the shame. My dad wasn’t even that mad–but I felt terrible. Even though my big sister had driven this same big sedan into a HUGE ditch the year before, miles from civilization in a Canadian campground, and she’d survived.

Not only do we punish ourselves on multiple occasions for the same flaw, we often punish those we love as well: every time we remember their mistake. We label, categorize, and judge–based on one incident. Whether we are judging ourselves or others, once is enough. Talk it out with yourself or your loved one, and let it go. If it recurs, revisit the issue. Otherwise, offer some compassion, remember the ratio of good to bad, and move on.

I think I’m ready to let go of that visceral memory. Here it goes: floating away like an errant helium balloon. Have any of your own balloons to release? Join me–I feel better already.

It’s not a super path

Leave a comment

Superman/woman syndrome is a sneaky snake in current culture. No matter how many times we’ve heard it, somewhere deep within we harbor the feeling that we can do it all, being all things to all people. This myth dies hard. In straight thinking moments–or days–we embrace the bunk that is superwoman/man, and free ourselves from those expectations. Hurray for a small dose of reality.

However, even when we readily admit that we can’t achieve superpowers, a sneaky leftover part of that drive to be super deserves the ‘who says’ challenge: beliefs about the path to change. We still expect to be like Superman himself, clearing buildings in a single bound. The one-click culture encourages us to expect change to happen just like that. Click off the old behavior, click on the new. Door open or door closed. Instant change and everything is now rosy–i.e. perfect.

Magic wand at the ready, I wish it were this way myself. (Though of course that would mean I was out of a job and I’m not quite ready to retire.) The reality is that it’s a path, often a twisting path at that. It’s two steps forward, then one back. Or it’s a spiral, my favorite illustration about moving toward change, cycling by the same issues again and again, reworking and fine-tuning as we make our way to the goal at the top.

Accepting this winding path as reality stops that old automatic “failure” thinking. When we stumble, or it seems that we are NOT achieving that goal in a single leap, we lose track of the big picture. We conclude that we’ve failed. Time to step back and see that you are on the path. It’s just not a single step, or even a song and dance two-step.

Have a little self-compassion. No single leaps aided by a ruby cape. Just steadily wind your way up the stairs, or along the path, and you’ll soon be where you wish to be. Enjoy the climb.

A strategy shift

2 Comments

Chastise yourself much? Scold yourself for not doing the right/healthy/calm thing, hoping to move yourself into good behavior? This thinking runs through my head at times: “What were you thinking? You know better!” As a culture, we have a too-ready acceptance of this process, i.e. that the best way to bring misbehavior in line is through correction and scolding, especially when applied to ourselves versus children. It’s a time-honored tradition, as this quote suggests:

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.——-Pearl S. Buck

Recent research looked at the effectiveness of this type of negative thinking in motivating behavior. Participants were instructed to focus on one of two options when facing a decision about eating a piece of chocolate cake. The first group focused on how badly they would feel if they broke their diets and ate the cake, while another group zeroed in on how virtuous they would feel if they resisted temptation. The study participants who connected with pride over making the healthy choice actually could resist the unhealthy food choice, while those who scolded themselves dove right in. Perhaps the scolding made them feel badly, ramping up the craving for comfort food?

This seems like another case of adults adopting a strategy that we would not practice with children. We know to correct gently and focus on what children have achieved, rather than rant about mistakes.

(Though we’ve swung the pendulum perhaps too far with children, fearing scolding will warp their little psyches. I’m not advocating harsh treatment of children by any means. But I am reminded of a story from my family’s early parenting days. My toddler daughter scribbled a picture; Dad oohed and aahed. So she scribbled another one. He oohed and aahed again. This went on for twenty minutes, as the drawings regressed to just a pink line of crayon across a whole sheet of paper. Daughter was clearly testing out the fatherly admiration society, not producing art for her own sake. )

Let’s apply these rules about shaping behavior in our own heads. Next time you need to motivate yourself, focus on how you will feel better with triumph, rather than selecting shame as the motivator. I’d love to hear how this works for you.

No one was ever scolded out of their sins. ——William Cowper

The View

Leave a comment

Remember this?

For most of us, this common optical illusion was our first lesson in shifting viewpoint. Did you see a vase, or did you see two profiles? Lots of fun in elementary school–or intro psych class–to try to see both, and explore which friends saw things the way that you did.

I’ve been enjoying this series over at LiveScience called “What The Heck Is This?” It’s good brain-stretching to view their photos, playing the same little guessing game. I particularly like this recent one:

Simple: clouds, right? As to not steal any thunder from LiveScience, you’ll have to click over to their site to get the answer.

Here’s another one:

Others in our world are often the best source of valuable perspective, and this fountain reminds me of that lesson learned from my two year old, years ago. In my best mom-teaching voice, I called out to my daughter in her car seat to “look at the pretty fountain, with the water shooting up!” To which she replied, rather disdainfully, “and falling down again.” I simply hadn’t focused on both aspects. Silly me, in her eyes.

I’m reading a book called Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill

Imagine you are in a small boat in the midst of this:

Your experience? Likely to be tossed around, sick to your stomach, maybe even crash and hurt yourself?

But what happens if you back off?

Kind of pretty, I think. Certainly not threatening. Incredible shift in perspective.

Next time an emotional storm threatens to sweep you crashing into the rocks, remove yourself from it. Tap your fingers. Breathe deeply. Count to ten. Drink a glass of water. Meditate. Take a walk. Talk to a friend. Write. Pound up and down the steps. And find yourself rising above it, able to react in a much less damaging way.

Want to develop the skill to shift your perspective? Join me and a host of like-minded souls in my upcoming meditation training.

Kindness exercises

1 Comment

As an addendum to the last post on being kinder to ourselves, here are two exercises to implement the goal of increased self-kindness.

1) Loving-kindness meditation is a classic strategy to open the heart and increase positive feelings toward self. While seemingly simple, this exercise can be incredibly powerful in releasing pent-up negativity toward self, allowing the love in your heart to rush in for YOU. And you only need three minutes.

Settle into a quiet, comfortable spot and close your eyes. Begin to focus on your breath, simply noticing the in and out process. Feel your lungs expand, feel your chest and abdomen rise and fall, notice the air moving past your nostrils. Once you feel the rhythm of your breath, repeat to yourself for several minutes:

May I be safe. May I be happy. May I feel love. May I live with ease.

On Thursday, when I posted the most recent post, I was upset about a decision I’d made, chastising myself for trusting someone else to do a job that I could’ve done. The perfectionist in me was running rampant with insults after the job was NOT done to my satisfaction: “How could you have been so stupid? You could’ve saved the money and done it yourself!” Suddenly, I remembered what I’d just posted about being kind to myself. I still seemed unable to turn it off. I closed my eyes, repeated the above phrases ten times, and was able to let the event go.

2) I’ve addressed bragging before, and how nice girls DON’T. So I thoroughly enjoyed this post over at Inviting Joy last week. Seems like a wonderful way to be nice to yourself, so take a few minutes to compose your own highlight reel today. This week, mine includes that ability to switch gears from perfection-driven harpy to calm self that I refer to above.

Redirect your kindness

5 Comments

You pride yourself on being a really nice, kind person, right? You strive to treat others well–from your children to the overworked store clerk. You feel guilty if you snap at a loved one or overreact with the slightest harrumph after waiting unattended in the doctor’s office as the minutes tick to hours. Yet, in your own mind, you verbally assault yourself for perceived errors and experienced feelings, easily hurling aspersions of “stupid,” “weak,” “lazy.” Simply fill-in-the-blank with your favorite personal insults. Or maybe you deny your own needs, pushing yourself to the brink doing for others while neglecting your own sleep, exercise, nutrition, or fun.

Where’s your self-compassion? Your ability to treat yourself as well as you hope to treat others? Self-compassion is the new hot topic in wellness and happiness. Psychological research is building the case that self-compassion is the most important life skill. Children who learn to treat themselves kindly, withholding harsh judgments of self, become more resilient, brave, creative, and energetic than kids who learn to chastise themselves. If you’re a parent, chances are you agree that you want to teach your child(ren) to talk kindly towards self–even while you continue your internal self-bashing.

Kristen Neff, professor at University of Texas at Austin, is leading the charge against this current trend of beating ourselves up as a form of motivation, in our relentless pursuit to achieve. She found that being self-critical was perceived as a way to keep one’s self in line, supposedly protecting ourselves from sloth or failure. It backfires, leaving us depressed, discouraged, or anxious. Why wouldn’t this be true? We avoid chastising children in this negative way that we adopt so lightly in our own heads for just this reason. We accept that if we verbally berate others, they will feel badly.

But we can’t seem to adopt the same grace toward our own human failings. We have tempers. We make mistakes. We hate. We open our mouths at times when we’re tired, hungry, cranky, and $%*#!! escapes that we’d rather censor. Purposely and mindfully cutting yourself some slack is one place to start. Forgive yourself for being a regular imperfect person with powerful feelings. Talk as nicely to yourself as you would to a loved one or friend. You know how to do it–just aim it at yourself, rather than reserving the kindness for others. Accept your emotions, insecurities, and overreactions, withholding judgment.

Self-compassion is not all about words, though. It’s also about self-care: resting when you are tired, knowing when you need a break, asking for help, having a good cry, or scheduling in some fun. Grace toward yourself can be in the form of a massage or a night off, too.

To quote Judith Orloff, MD, on self-compassion: “we make progress when we beat ourselves up a little bit less each day.” It’s just baby steps: being honest about and accepting our human feelings and mistakes while avoiding the leap into overreaction and self-judgment.

Like quizzes? Here’s one on self-compassion developed by Kristin Neff. And the New York Times offers some of Neff’s tips for implementing self-compassion here.