Simple Secret #3: Self-Compassion
We’ve been exploring different ways to discover inner peace, starting with Simple Secrets to Find Peace Within with a Simple Self-Assessment, followed by Simple Secrets #1 and Simple Secret #2. Today, let’s explore the final secret: the secret of Self-Compassion.
Simple Secret #3:
Be Your Compassionate Best Friend
Are your relationships peaceful and harmonious? Do they lift you up and give you the support you need during tough times?
Having someone to help get us through challenging times can make all the difference. A lot rides on the extent to which we have healthy, harmonious relationships. It’s a keystone piece to enjoying a peaceful life. We are all intricately intertwined… and impeccably so. What if I told you that there is really nothing outside of us? What if I said, our outer world mirrors the state of our inner world? We are all One.
In light of this, let me ask, how important is your relationship with yourself? Do you value that relationship?
You are the one you live with, walk with, wake up with, eat with, work with, go to sleep with. You are the one you were born with, and you are the one you will die with. You’ve always been, and always will be, with you, guaranteed. No one else can give you that guarantee. Your relationship with yourself is one of the most powerful relationships you will ever have.
So how are you to you?
Are you there for yourself when you need it? Or do you put everyone else’s needs and desires above your own, emptying your cup in the process? Perhaps even leaving yourself bereft?
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Are you consistently kind to yourself?
Is your self-talk positive and reassuring?
Or do you blame or shame yourself? Especially when confronted with perceived inadequacies or situational challenges. Those are the times when it’s easy for us to chastise, belittle, shame, or be verbally unkind toward ourselves. Sometimes people take on more blame than is reasonable and just, feel guilty, or project fears into the future by worrying. These are ways we hurt ourselves.
“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
We didn't criticize or judge when we were born. Those energies are not who we are and don’t reflect our core self. These are old mental habits – conditioned patterns that we learned and acquired through early wounding experiences. Someone showed us how to be that way. Our core self, our true nature, is loving, compassionate, joyful, and peaceful. That is our nature, and anything that is not in alignment with our nature is felt as stress.
There is one thing, one energy, one carrying medium, that can make or break any kind of transformation process a person is engaged in. The one energy can practically promise sustained, successful, effective outcomes to many healing modalities, therapies and techniques that you'll find. And in the absence of this one energy the best therapy in the world has limited capability.
The medium within which all healing can happen is self-compassion.
Self-compassion is essential to creating sustainable positive changes. It allows us to rewire, reprogram, recondition, and reframe. With it, replacing and redirecting can be swift and effective.
Without self-compassion, the inner saboteur speaks loudly and frequently with negative self-talk, overriding everything else. Even if you have access to wonderful wise healers and resources, and employ amazing mental, emotional, and spiritual skills and techniques, if you also have a habit of harsh or negative self-talk, the positive steps you are taking will be diluted at best, and sabotaged, reversed, or rendered ineffective at worst. Because reprogramming takes repetition, and you are with you more than anyone else.
Our mind's inner dialog loves to repeat itself over and over. This repetition becomes "autosuggestion," a way that we program our subconscious through verbal statements that we say to ourselves. And because our thoughts and inner dialog cascade into corresponding emotions, we tend to feel exactly how we've been talking to ourselves.
Basically, a lot rides on keeping our inner landscape well-lit.
“Talk to yourself as you would someone you love.”
So why aren't we more self-compassionate? Dr. Kristin Neff, compassion researcher and Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, found in her research that, “The biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent. They believe that self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”
In Simple Secret #2 we learned the value of questioning our stressful thoughts: Does self-criticism keep us in line? Is being hard on ourselves the way to assure we don't become selfish or lazy?
Or is there a better way? There is a happier way. A loving way. A more peaceful way. A way that is in alignment with our true nature.
Let's be kind to ourselves - and let’s be assiduous about it.
“It is a beautiful experience being with ourselves at a level of complete acceptance. When that begins to happen, when you give up resistance and needing to be perfect, a peace will come over you as you have never known”
While there are many things that can create improvement in our mind, emotions, and lives, compassion is powerful, protective and transcendent. It can carry us through challenging times. It is a quality that comes natural to us at a deep heart and soul level. There is a part of you that is already compassionate, supportive, loving, and kind. It's your spiritual nature. It’s already there.
So will you show yourself compassion? Especially when life doesn’t go as planned, or you feel inadequate, or when the outer world tries to talk you out of it?
Each time you turn towards yourself with an open heart, you’ll find the dearest friend you will ever meet. A true Friend. When you meet that Friend, drop into the depths of your being and feel the unwavering compassion and love. Ask the important questions, and invite answers as though what’s waiting inside your heart has the purest of intentions, and all the love and compassion you could ever know.
Invite that part of you to speak the loudest.
“Be kind to yourself, dear - to our innocent follies. Forget any sounds or touch you know that did not help you dance. You will come to see that all evolves us.”
Feel free to enjoy this peaceful meditative video on YouTube - Mind Like Still Water.
And so, to wrap things up, to find the deep well of peace within us, we can do three simple things to help us on our way. We first must neutrally witness our thoughts with non attachment. We must question our stressful thoughts, and understand that it is not true; love and peace is our default. Finally, we must understand that self-compassion is one of our greatest tools we can use to transform our lives.
Warm Rays of Blessings From My Heart to Yours,
Lisa