Be kind to yourself

In everything you do, don’t forget to be kind to yourself.

Kindness and self-compassion are prerequisites for mental health. They permeate all areas of life.

It’s easy to be kind to a friend, but are you able to show the same kindness to yourself?

Having compassion for yourself means having a positive attitude even when you are struggling, failing, experiencing unpleasant thoughts and feelings. And at the same time wishing to alleviate this suffering. It’s the opposite of criticizing yourself when you’re struggling.

All people experience suffering, feel incapable at times, and things don’t go their way. Therefore, it’s bound to happen to you at some point. It’s part of the universal human experience.

But having self-compassion for yourself doesn’t mean feeling overly sorry for yourself! It’s about finding the delicate balance between suppressing emotions on the one hand and being too absorbed in them on the other.

Remember that compassion and kindness is not just a passive acceptance of whatever comes in your way. These skills will help you take steps toward alleviating your suffering – saying no, standing up to injustice, or clearly setting your own boundaries.

Tips

  • Practice mindfulness of your experience without judging it. It is a useful way to develop kindness to yourself.
  • Try replacing critical thoughts with kinder ones („I’m useless because I can’t study all day“, instead you may say: „Few people can study all day; maybe tomorrow I’ll do better than today.“)
  • Try talking to yourself in your mind as you would talk or talk to a good friend. The way you speak to yourself sometimes might hurt others if the words were meant for them. No wonder they hurt you too. How you talk to yourself affects your self-image.
  • Treat yourself kindly. A person should be kind to himself/herself not because he/she deserves it, but because it benefits him/her.

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