Learning Self-Compassion

5 Easy Ways to Cultivate Self-Compassion Every Day

Modern life is filled with pressure to succeed and achieve. Often, we confuse being the best version of ourselves with being “the best”. This mentality creates an environment that leads to extreme anger at ourselves when things don’t turn out the way we planned. In those moments, its important to show ourselves some compassion. When we think about compassion, we often think of it as something to show others. We forget that self-compassion is just as, if not more, important. Self-compassion is the ability to forgive ourselves for any mistakes we make. More importantly, it’s the ability to stop the harsh criticism that we tend to give ourselves.

Practing self-compassion should be a daily occurrence. Here are five easy ways to practice self-compassion every day:

1. Stop Beating Yourself Up – It’s easy to get wrapped up in the shoulda, woulda, coulda’s. Learn to not criticize yourself for every little thing that went wrong. Instead, try to look at mistakes as opportunities to grow.
2. Tend to Your Needs – On our journey towards success, many of us neglect our basic needs such as sleep or exercise. Take time each day to make sure your basic needs are met. It’s simple things that makes a huge difference in your well-being.
3. Get in Some Quality “You” Time – Along with meeting any and all your basic needs, set some time in your day or week for activities that you bring you joy and peace. If it makes you happy, do it.
4. Learn Acceptance – There are some things about ourselves that we can’t change. That’s okay. Learn to accept  (or even love) any perceived “flaws” you think you may have. These are the things that make you uniquely you after all.
5. Shift Your Focus To Yourself– We spend way too much time thinking about how others perceive us. The irony here is that (1) it’s impossible to tell what anyone is thinking (good or bad) and (2) people are never thinking or talking about you as much you think they are. So try to shift your focus from external validation to being content with yourself despite what others may think.