Self-compassionate living is a daily discipline of treating yourself well, especially mentally and emotionally. As we age, time becomes more valuable; we want to minimize negative feelings like unhappiness and relish more joy, peace, and contentment. Yet, transitory negative emotions frequently rob us of the total pleasure each moment can bring. Fortunately, developing self-compassion and practicing self-compassionate living gives you the skills to navigate life’s challenges with minimal negative feelings and maximum grace. You can learn to be self-compassionate. You can learn how to treat yourself well mentally and emotionally.
Do you have an inner critic? You know, that inner judge that shames you, rages at you, and generally tries (and frequently succeeds) to bring you down, leaving you exhausted and feeling beat up. If you have this internal voice, you probably want to silence it, and you’ve tried numerous methods to muzzle it. Sadly, they didn’t work, did they?
Now, you’ve lived long enough to know that there are no easy answers, unfortunately. You’ve tried everything, and nothing worked for very long.
Are you ready to try something new?
Are you ready to try something new? Yes, it’ll be challenging at first. Yet, if you commit to caring for yourself and you’re ready to start small and gently, maybe you're prepared to work with how your mind processes reality, especially if it helps your days feel better.
Think about how you think; for example, notice your brain's mental activities after any stimulus. Looking closely, you’ll notice that positive thoughts lead to good feelings, and negative thoughts lead to bad feelings. Now, consider how often the negative thoughts and feelings torment your mind; it seems like sometimes they won’t go away.
What if you could change that situation, though? What if you could change how your mind deals with those negative feelings? What if you could transform that inner torturer into an inner teacher (albeit a sometimes noisy one)?
Now, try to go a step further. Imagine liking yourself so much that you realign the ways your mind interacts with itself. (Notice I’m asking you to separate you and your thoughts; the way you think is learned, it’s not you.) What if you mentally treated yourself with the same care and wisdom that a loving friend would use with you?
This line of thought may seem strange; please try to imagine it anyway.
Now that you’ve tried imagining loving yourself like a perfect friend would, are you willing to go one more step further? If so, please continue.
Remember the inner critic I mentioned earlier? Imagine allowing that inner negativity to yell while you treat it with kindness. That means you listen to it, hold its hand, and meet it with understanding.
Imagine treating yourself kindly, even when you feel down, angry, embarrassed, sad, or ashamed. Imagine treating yourself well. Imagine treating yourself self-compassionately.
With this website community,
you can do this because
you can learn to be self-compassionate.
Treating yourself this way may seem strange; try anyway. Try to be open to a new way of thinking, especially about things (like yourself) that you want to treat kindly.
The Beginning of Self-compassion.
Start here: self-compassion isn’t a feeling. It’s a discipline of treating yourself the way you want to be treated, and you can learn it! There are some tools and skills to learn, and they may feel odd at first. Fortunately, as you practice these tools, you’ll begin to feel better about yourself. You’ll feel better because you will be loving yourself the way you want to be loved. You will enact these crafts! That means you won’t have to depend on anyone else to soothe the tender spots in your life or erase the broken areas in your emotional well-being. You will discover you are perfect and whole; you are complete as you are, and most of the time, you’ll feel that way.
Additionally, you'll be better prepared when things don’t go your way and you sense dim flicks of lightning and the rumblings of an emotional storm brewing. Self-compassionate living has fortified you. You will be ready for the storms of life, no matter how uncomfortable they are. You’ll navigate the difficulties because by practicing self-compassion, you will empower yourself to live your authentic life fully, even amid emotional storms. That is the gift of being self-compassionate, and you can learn the skills; you can practice the disciplines; you can be self-compassionate.
Practicing self-compassion culminates in navigating life’s daily situations and, more significantly, your thoughts about those situations so that you minimize the negative feelings you experience while enhancing the positive ones.
So, to begin, please sign up for my monthly Self-Compassionate Living newsletter and get free access to my newest video series, Introducing Self-Compassion. The video series is yours, free for signing up for my monthly Self-Compassionate Living newsletter. (The video series is so new that I’m not finished with it yet. I’m still in production with it. I will send you access to it as soon as I’m finished with it.)
