fbpx
Menu

Posts tagged with “self-compassion”

Radical Acceptance with Tara Brach: If You’re Hard on Yourself, Read On

By

Have you ever thought, “Something’s wrong with me”? I suspect we all have at one time or another.

We’ve thought we’re too quiet, too loud, too eager, too lazy, too sensitive, too dramatic, or generally not good enough.

And social media doesn’t help much. Every time we log on to Facebook or Instagram we’re bombarded with everyone else’s accomplishments, adventures, and best angles, which can easily lead us to conclude our life is somehow lacking—that we are somehow lacking.

From there, it’s just a quick leap to self-flagellation.

We can all be our own harshest critics. We can beat ourselves …

Why Self-Compassion Is the Key to Living the Life You Want

By

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers

When was the last time you stopped trying to improve something about yourself or your life?

I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing goals. I guess it goes with the territory as a cancer survivor who always felt like she had something to prove, even twenty years later.

For everything the doctors told me I could not do because of my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (or as a result of the chemotherapy that healed me), I gave my all to accomplish and …

How Feeling Shame Freed Me from Suffering

By

“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

It was October, 2012. The U.S. Presidential Election was around the corner. I was paying an unaccustomed amount of attention to political news on TV and to political discussion sites online. At one site in particular, I was eager to become part of the community, to make a good impression, to build a reputation.

To put it mildly, that didn’t work out well.

One evening I was watching an interview with a politician whose name I recognized, but I didn’t know much about him. I …

9 Ways to Silence Self-Criticism and Embrace Self-Love

By

“I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.” ~John Green

Do you ever wonder if that voice in your head is right?

Do you re-live events, scouring through every detail to look for places where you went wrong in your actions?

Do you ever walk away from a conversation with your inner voice ranting that you should have done better—that you should have said this or that instead?

That self-critical voice became a prominent friend of mine. I called it the gremlin. The gremlin leapt onto my shoulder after every conversation with …

10 Ways to Practice Self-Compassion and Overcome Your Shame

By

Note: The winners for this giveaway are akarosco and Tyler Bel. Subscribe for daily or weekly emails to get wisdom in your inbox and learn about future giveaways!

“This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.” ~Kristin Neff

I consider myself to be a very compassionate person, but I’ve struggled a great deal with self-compassion. Though I’ve now been sober for over six years, back when I was drinking I made a lot of mistakes, and it’s taken …

Increase Your Self-Love: 8 Ways to Be Good to Yourself

By

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection.” ~Buddha

Someone asked me a couple of years ago out of ten, how much did I love myself? I said four. I had to give my immediate, intuitive answer, as this was the honest truth.

Four! That came as a shock to me. It’s low. I thought I was pretty good with myself. I’m smart, multitalented, not bad looking, generally happy, I have lots of friends and enjoy life.

But now the truth began to shine. With introspection I could see why the …

10 Powerful Practices to Take Good Care of Yourself

By

“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.” ~Neil Gaiman

I discovered my spiritual path early. As a teenager I would read my mother’s self-help books. I spent most of my twenties actively pursuing self-development by studying, attending workshops, and going on retreats all over the world.

At the time, I thought I was searching for happiness and inner peace. I see now that I bought into a rigid idea of what a ‘spiritual person’ was and tried to live up to that.

My inner world was not happy or peaceful. The way I treated myself was far …

What Are You Practicing—Self-Judgment or Self-Compassion?

By

“You are what you practice most.” ~Richard Carlson

“What are you practicing?” she asked in a gentle, lilting voice.

The entire class was in triangle pose, and at that moment I was comparing my triangle to the young woman’s right next to mine, scolding myself for wobbling out of the pose and simultaneously harassing myself for not being “further along” in my career. (Because if you’re going to hate on yourself, my motto is GO BIG.)

“Are you practicing judgment or comparison?” she tenderly probed.

“WTF!” I thought. “Does this woman have a direct line to my brain?”

“Are you …

A Simple Practice to Prevent Binge Eating and Boost Your Happiness

By

“Be nice to yourself. It’s hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time.” ~Christine Arylo

When the alarm went off, the haze of a dream dissolved into the memory of yesterday’s failure. My stomach was still full from last night’s binge, and I was utterly disgusted with myself.

How could I have blown it again? What was wrong with me?

I grabbed a notepad and pen and resolved that today would be different. Today I would stick to my diet!

As I had every day for the previous several weeks, I made a list of …

5 Steps to Coming Back To Life After Hitting Rock Bottom

By

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” ~Nelson Mandela

Living through the past several years of my life has been a humbling experience. I guess I shouldn’t say I lived through those years. I existed.

Through those years, life threw me punch after punch. I suffered through public shaming and online bullying, was crippled for six months with devastating anxiety and depression, gained fifty pounds, lost a lucrative job, and saw my marriage crumble before my eyes.

I hit rock bottom, and I hit it hard.

The thing is, …

How To Let Go Of Self-Doubt and Find Long-Lasting Happiness

By

“It’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit.  Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same.”  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Have you ever let your doubts get in the way of feeling happy?

I have.

I left my soul-sucking corporate job to live my dream, teaching yoga in Thailand.

I was the happiest woman on earth—or was I?

It looked that way from the outside. But each time I opened my mouth to teach a class, …

6 Tips to Love and Support Yourself and Become a Happier You

By

“Awaken; return to yourself” ~Marcus Aurelius

Darkness. Resentment. Detachment. Extreme discomfort.

Those are the words I would use to describe my internal experience during my adolescent years up to young adulthood.

Depression was something I was all too familiar with. Fear was running my life and I was exhausted. I now understand that a lot of it had to do with the dysfunctional family I grew up in and the pain that ensued.

Determined to break this unhealthy way of being, I’ve been on a road of healing and self-growth over the past few years.

However, my transition into a …

A Change That Leads to Unconditional Self-Confidence

By

“Kindness in words creates confidence.” ~Lao Tzu

Does your life feel like an endless experience of struggle and stress? That while you have moments of reprieve, they are transient and short lived?

It may be that the problem lies with your confidence—in your belief in your ability to bring about successful outcomes when you experience challenges.

For many of us, our attitudes toward ourselves continually undermine our confidence.

That was my experience for most of my life. My confidence was dependent on how I felt I was doing.

If I did well, I felt good. If I struggled, …

Find Happiness Now Instead of Chasing It in the Future

By

“You can only grow if you’re willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” ~Brian Tracy

I found myself at a crossroads last year. I had reached the end of my time in college, and I had no post-graduation commitments.

I was working at the time on my applications to medical school, as I have wanted to become a doctor for a long time. However, I knew that medical schools are inundated with qualified applicants every year, but only have a few seats to offer. Thus, my vision of myself as a doctor still seemed to be …

7 Steps to Move Through Sadness (and What We Can Learn from It)

By

“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.” ~Buddha 

He had been ignoring the symptoms for months, possibly even a year. When my husband came home from the doctors, he told me his PSA score was high, and he needed to have a biopsy. That date came and went, and we were waiting for the pathology report.

The doctor assured us it was nothing.

The image of standing in the car dealership parking lot, talking with my son and son-in-law will be forever etched in my memory. When the phone rang, I saw that it …

How to Take Responsibility for Your Life Without Blaming Yourself

By

“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands.” ~Robert M. Pirsig

Many of us are exploring what it means to be responsible for ourselves, to be creating our own reality. These are concepts that in some situations are easy to grab ahold of; at other times, the meanings are far more elusive.

I’ve seen, in myself and in others, the tendency to beat ourselves up while we are learning what self-empowerment really means. I think this is a natural result of our cultural programming, and it’s understandable that we’d …

3 Keys to Feeling Happy, No Matter What Happens

By

“Look at what you’ve got and make the best of it. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” ~Proverb.

The year 2013 was the happiest of my life.

Not because it was the most perfect or problem free year. In reality it was as messy, sad, and as difficult as any previous year.

In October I looked at the last correspondence between my biological father and me for the first time since his suicide years before. I felt as devastated as the day he died. Healing is a much longer journey than I’d imagined.

Around …

How to Stop Judging and Being Hard on Yourself

By

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

For a long time I joked that if I had a time machine, I would go back to 1989 and give my sixteen-year-old self a swift butt kicking. But then a few months ago, on my fortieth birthday, a friend posted a picture of me at sixteen on Facebook.

Seeing this image of myself totally threw me for a loop. Other than a school photo, it’s probably one of the few pictures I am aware of from that time in my life.

I spent …

How to Practice Self-Compassion: 5 Tips to Stop Being Down on Yourself

By

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” ~Jack Kornfield

I never wanted to see a therapist. I imagined settling onto the storied couch and seeing dollar signs appear in concerned eyes as I listed the family history of mental illness, addiction, and abuse. I feared I’d be labeled before I’d ever been heard.

But after experiencing the emotional shock of witnessing a murder, I knew I needed a space to grieve. So I gathered all of my courage and laid myself bare to a very nice woman who had Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements on her …

When You’re Hard on Yourself: Replace Guilt with Self-Compassion

By

“Be gentle with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

“Guilty,” admits an offender. “Guilty,” proclaims a jury. Things are pretty black and white in trial verdicts and courtroom pleas (although there are still plea bargains and hung juries, mitigating circumstances and appeals).

Life is rarely as cut-and-dried as the criminal justice system.

I’ve experienced guilt in different shades of grey—in rational and many irrational ways that bear no real relation to the “crime” at hand, or to any crime at all.

I’ve experienced guilt simply for how I think, how I feel, not for anything …