With the new year ringing in, it’s often the time we start thinking about the goals we want to achieve. It’s a chance to start fresh, which is really important in our world today where we are facing a mental health crisis, both in the US and abroad. New Year’s resolutions can be difficult to maintain, but one strategy to help increase your happiness and chance to complete your goals is self-compassion.
What is self-compassion?
Self-compassion has risen in popularity due to Dr. Kristin Neff, who helped pioneer its popularity. Self-compassion is about loving and accepting yourself fully and having compassion for who you are.
Dr. Kristin Neff
Self-compassion is the opposite of shaming and blaming yourself. It’s looking inward, seeing yourself as human, and having loving-kindness towards who you are now. You are showing yourself you are worthy of love and acceptance as you are.
What is common with every other human in the world is that we all share the same human condition of being flawed and fragile. We make mistakes and have oddities and quirks. But similar to how we’d treat a friend we love or a young child, self-compassion helps us realize that we are human and our quirks and flaws are worthy of love too. That is what self-compassion can do.
How does it help our relationships?
Self-compassion is also the antidote to one of the four predictors of an unsuccessful relationship:
Why? We get defensive when we feel we need to protect ourselves from shame. We might feel like we’re being attacked by what the person is saying and we might feel shame about whatever flaw or criticism they are bringing up.
We can actually soothe our shame with self-compassion.
When someone says something they think we did wrong, we don’t have to yell or get all angry and mad next. We can look inward, see if the feedback is true for us, and have self-compassion. We can energetically be honest with ourselves about how we feel and who we are. By being honest with ourselves, we can find solutions to move forward. Instead of getting angry in a way to hide our shame.
How does it help our new year’s resolutions?
Ringing in your new year with self-compassion can be a great way to feel more love and acceptance — and might actually be a good motivating factor to help keep more of your new year’s goals intact. Why?
“Remember that if you really want to motivate yourself, love is more powerful than fear.”
Dr. Kristin Neff
Love is a more powerful motivator than fear. And ironically, the second you being to accept yourself as you are, the more you can change.
Carol Rogers said it well in the quote: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
When we like who we are, change happens because genuinely liking yourself as you are requires self-confidence and self-awareness. This actually gives us the confidence to do new things.
Practices to make self-compassion a part of your new year
So here are some ways to incorporate self-compassion now and into the new year:
- Weekly or daily loving-kindness meditations. These meditations are on YouTube and range from shorter ones of 5 minutes or longer ones of 20-minute ones and more. These meditations allow you to enter a calm state of connecting with yourself in a deeper, grounded way. You get to connect to your inner world and give loving-kindness to your subconscious mind, which is where real change can begin since your subconscious mind decides 95%–97% of your actions.
- Daily reminders to change your dialogue. Set reminders on your phone to: speak to yourself kindly, give yourself one compliment, or even share one thing you accept and love about yourself. This can be a great way to keep the habit of speaking kindly to yourself daily.
- Make self-accepting introspection a part of your routine. This allows you to connect with yourself and spend time getting to know yourself and what parts still would love acceptance. You could journal in the morning and/or evening, or even once a week. Consistency is the important part.
- Practice validating and accepting your moods and traits — all of them. A good TikTok that discusses this is below, but basically, practice accepting and being kind to yourself about how you feel and accepting where you’re at in the moment.
You got this!
Self-compassion can be a game changer for many people who have spent their lives treating themselves as if they are imperfect, flawed, evil, or just inherently not human in some way. Self-compassion allows us to see ourselves as humans — fragile people who need love and support. Even and especially from ourselves.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Taisiia Stupak on Unsplash
The post How to Incorporate More Self-Compassion into Your New Year appeared first on The Good Men Project.