Cultivating Self-Compassion In Your Life

In short, self-compassion is being kind to yourself through the good times and the not so good times. Research has shown numerous benefits of cultivating self-compassion. For example, it has been found that people who display self-compassion have greater:

⬆ Social connectedness

⬆ Emotional intelligence

⬆ Happiness, and

⬆ Life satisfaction

In addition, self-compassion has been found to correlate less with:

⬇ Anxiety

⬇ Depression

⬇ Shame, and

⬇ Fear of failure

Do you want to start cultivating self-compassion in your life but don’t know where to start? No worries. Watch our video below where we walk you through how to start cultivating self-compassion in your life today.

Danielle McCarthy:  Hey guys, Danielle McCarthy here for Mind Potential Psychology. So today in this video, I’m going to be talking about “Self-Compassion” and most importantly, I’m going to be giving you a tip that I want you guys to try to put into place today to start cultivating self-compassion in your life.

So first of all, what is self-compassion? In simple terms, it’s being kind to yourself through the ups as well as the downs. So… during the good times, but also the not-so-good times.

Why do we want to cultivate self-compassion in our life? Well there’s more and more research emerging showing the positive link between self-compassion and a range of different things, including increased social connectedness, emotional intelligence, happiness, and life satisfaction.

In addition to this, self-compassion has been shown to correlate less with anxiety, depression, shame, and fear of failure.

That brings us to my tip for you today. I want you to see if you can become aware during the day of your internal chit chatter. And at some point today, see if you can notice if it turns critical or if it’s not being so kind. Just see if you can notice how you’re talking to yourself. Maybe there’s something that happens in an interaction with somebody or something didn’t work and you notice that your internal chit chatter turns negative or self-critical. What I want you to do in that moment is to stop and ask yourself,

“What would I say right now if I was talking to a friend or a loved one? What would I say to them if they came to me and said they were having these thoughts and they were talking to themselves this way?”

Would you say, “You’re right. You are useless, you are no good” or would you be kind and compassionate? The reason I want you to do this is because we tend be a lot more kind and compassionate towards loved ones and friends then towards ourselves if we are in the same situation. So it’s about stopping and looking at how you would respond if it was a loved one. Then it’s about seeing if you can start to turn some of that kindness you would show a loved one towards yourself.

That’s my tip for today. See if you can notice that internal chit chatter and if it turns negative at some point through the day, stop and ask yourself “What would I say to a loved one right now? Can I start to say those words to myself?”