Mindful Self-Compassion

Hi, and welcome to session 19 of your guided journey to less stress. We are almost at the end of our program, so I would encourage you to make the most of these final days. Today in particular is a great day to really engage as we're talking about self-compassion. We tend to be our own toughest critics. Sometimes, we might even believe we deserve to feel bad. Many of us go through cycles in which we're not very self-loving. We have so much compassion for others, yet we don't aim any of that compassion back at ourselves. In fact, research shows it is often so much easier for us to see the best in others than do the same for ourselves. It's easy to become self-critical when we feel like we're falling off track or not perfect, but it's important to remember to treat ourselves with the same level of kindness, concern, and support that we would show a good friend or loved one. When facing difficult life struggles, personal mistakes, failures, or inadequacies, it's important to try to respond with kindness rather than harsh self-judgements and to recognize that imperfection is part of the shared human experience. So as we near the end of this program, if you're noticing that you're being really self-critical about days that you've missed or not really engaged, I'd encourage you to pause and offer yourself some compassion for trying your best. One thing I'd like to note is that self-compassion is different from indulgent complacency. Trying your best is not the same as not trying at all. It's sometimes easy to use self-compassion or being gentle with yourself as an excuse for not making necessary changes in your life. In order to make lasting changes in your relationship with stress, you're going to need to find the harmony between your inner critic and your complacency. I always tell my students this is like a baby learning to walk. The baby is going to fall down. Of course, you're not going to yell at the baby to get up, but you're also not going to let it stay down forever. You're going to gently encourage them to get up and try again. So with that in mind, let's keep trying together....