How to be kind to yourself

I was chatting to a friend of mine about mindfulness recently and they asked me “How do I be kind to myself? What does that look like in practice?”

I like to think that I’m kind to myself now but it wasn’t always the case. I used to berate myself for mistakes, especially in the social setting. I would revisit things I had said and done again and again, calling using unkind words to describe myself. I criticised everything about myself and everything I did -  I’m sure you’ve gone through periods of this too. I still have moments of feeling unworthy.

There’s lots of reasons why we’re harsh to ourselves - it can be a result of us internalising what we’ve heard before from other people or it could just be that its the culture where we live to be hard on yourself.

I’ve talked before on the podcast about judgement but I think it bears repeating. One of the key attitudes of mindfulness is non-judgement, accepting things as they are without putting our spin on things. Jon Kabat Zinn talks alot about the importance of this in his books - we categorise things as good, bad or neutral, we’re barely aware of it. We’re very quick to put ourselves in the ‘bad’ box. We’ve been talking in the podcast recently about being in union with reality - one of the ways that we’re out of touch with reality is how we view ourselves. The point isn’t to only see ourselves in positive terms, its that we should let go of our self judgement entirely and accept ourselves as we are.

Thats easier said than done as this process tends to be automatic. But we can train ourselves to be mindful of thoughts and feelings arising so that we don’t cling to them or get lost in them. If we’re disappointed in ourselves and we can feel our mind picking up the sledgehammer we can stop, we can breathe, notice those difficult thoughts arise and let them pass through our awareness. 

Once we’ve trained ourselves to let these judgemental thoughts pass without grabbing onto them, we can start the process of understanding why we judge ourselves. Are we picking up the baton from someone else, possibly someone in our childhood? Are we applying the same standards to ourselves that we do to other people? 

One of the most important ways we can be kind to ourselves is use mindful speech. Self talk is one of the key drivers of our mood and so we need to choose our words carefully. Imagine if you were talking to someone who felt they had made a mistake and you called them an idiot - you wouldn’t of course, because you wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings and its not OK to call people names. But we do it to ourselves! See if you can apply your mindful awareness to the words that you use towards yourself and ask yourself the fundamental question - is it true?

Aim to have an inner voice of compassion, empathy and understanding - someone who’ll be there for you when you’re struggling. See your own suffering and let go of standards, especially perfectionism. Listen to yourself. Give yourself permission to simply be, as you are. You don’t need to be your best self, you don’t need to be anyone else, you only have to be you, breathing in and breathing out in this moment. 

Another important practice for self care is feeling grateful towards yourself, its something that we don’t do enough of. Do good things for yourself like meditation, exercise, eating well and thank yourself for it. Noone looks after you more than you do, and you do a good job. There’s so much that we do that’s self care that we barely notice, things are important for our physical wellbeing and our mental health. For example taking a shower. Enjoy it slowly with mindful awareness and feel some gratitude towards yourself when you’re finished. Same with cleaning the kitchen, making a meal. Why not set the intention now to find three things every day this week that you’re going to feel grateful towards yourself for. You might be surprised at the impact it can have on your self perception.

Finally, keep in mind that your pain and suffering is universal. It might sound a bit grim but a certain amount of suffering is part of life. But you are not alone. It binds us together as human beings and gives us solidarity. Your suffering is my suffering, my suffering is your suffering. We can be there for each other. One of the most important ways you can be kind to yourself is not to be silent or hide away. You can  let other people see your suffering.