Self-compassion

The idea of being kind to yourself is either met with love by some or ironically, resistance, by others. In our society, we are very much entrenched in the idea that if we show compassion toward ourselves, it is a subtle sign that we are weak. Rather, chastising ourselves for our foibles and failures only makes us stronger. In fact, however, research has shown that positive statements toward ourselves actually make us more creative, happy, and good people to be around. Try it some time: the next time you spill milk (especially the breast milk you just pumped OR the formula you just measured), say something like, “oh, honey” or “oh, my dear” or even “oh, _______ (your first name).” Because even removing the ownership of the mistake from first person to third person has an impact. Life really will go on after spilled milk.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s