Tips to Practicing Self Compassion to Feel Better
Do you ever get annoyed at yourself? You are not alone. All of us beat ourselves up for doing something we regret from time to time. Sometimes this is healthy as it stops us from making bad choices, but often we can be excessively negative.
We can avoid excessive negativity by practicing self-compassion. This involves accepting our flaws, forgiving ourselves for our mistakes and showing kindness to ourselves. Research shows that practicing self-compassion improves your psychological well-being by making you happier and more optimistic. It also boosts emotional intelligence, life satisfaction and increases your social connectedness.
How Can You Practice Self-Compassion?
Practicing self-compassion can be harder than it sounds, but there are techniques you can use to make it a lasting habit.
- Practice Mindfulness
Negative storylines playing themselves out in your head could lead you down the path of excessive self-criticism and negative rumination. Mindfulness, which is a non-judgmental state of awareness is the antidote.
As a core part of self-compassion, mindfulness lets you focus on accepting what you are going through, and leads you to question your experiences objectively. What’s more, mindfulness encourages you to feel your suffering through spacious awareness.
- Have a Growth Mindset
The essence of psychologist Carol Dweck’s research is how mindset impacts well-being. She discovered that happiness is the result of a growth mindset. For instance, you will be happier if you see your challenges as growth opportunities, not as insurmountable obstacles.
Embrace challenges, find meaning in them, and always believe in yourself. If you are overly critical of yourself and view yourself negatively compared to others, try to look for inspiration in others’ successes.
- Accept Your Flaws
Accepting something does not mean you have to like it. All of us have things we don’t like about ourselves, but by accepting the flaws you cannot change, you will be happier with yourself.
Acceptance means striving to view yourself as being only human. As a result, you never put yourself down or lose your faith in your own potential because of a one-off mistake or a flaw you are powerless to fix.
- Change Your Perspective
Having a long-term view of life could open your eyes to how much emphasis you could be placing on things that are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. For instance, will the thing that you are upset about today really matter one year from now?
Think of the world as giant globe with billions of people, many of whom are surviving major catastrophes. This is a reminder that many of your problems are not really as big as they may seem. You are not the first person to feel how you do, and you will not be the last. Take it as a chance for emotional growth.
- Treat Yourself as a Friend
This is one of the easiest strategies to eliminate negative self-talk and replace it with self-compassion. Think about what you would do or say to a close friend who came to you after a failure or rejection.
How would you treat your friend? What would you say to them if they told you about their problems and struggles? If they were in your situation and excessively criticizing themselves, what would you tell them? You deserve the same compassion, tenderness and empathy that you would give a friend in need.