As the seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said, ‘My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.
Connectedness is inherent to compassion. When compassion is turned inward, it means we acknowledge that all humans are imperfect and lead an imperfect life. While this may sound obvious, we often fall into the trap of believing that things should go well and that something has gone wrong when they don’t.
May I be safe. May I be peaceful. May I be kind to myself. May I accept myself as I am.
These are the thoughts and emotions that are arising in my conscious awareness in the present moment.
So what’s the answer? To stop judging and evaluating ourselves altogether. To stop trying to label ourselves as “good” or “bad” and simply accept ourselves with an open heart.
Suffering stems from a single source – comparing our reality to our ideals. When reality matches our wants and desires, we’re happy and satisfied. When reality doesn’t match our wants and desires, we suffer.
Our emotional suffering is caused by our desire for things to be other than they are.
His point was that we can distinguish between the normal pain of life – difficult emotions, physical discomfort, and so on – and actual suffering, which is the mental anguish caused by fighting against the fact that life is sometimes painful.
If you’re able to comfort yourself every time something painful happens, staying centered and not running away with reactivity, you can start to trust yourself. You can more easily find inner courage when hard times hit, knowing that you can get through almost anything with the help of your own compassionate support.
When someone close to us is feeling inadequate or is facing a difficult life challenge, we’ve learned over the years what to say: “I’m so sorry. What do you need right now? Is there anything I can do to help? Remember I’m here for you.
The golden rule says: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. An addendum should be: Do NOT do unto others as you do unto yourself, or you’ll have no friends.
When reality matches our wants and desires, we’re happy and satisfied. When reality doesn’t match our wants and desires, we suffer.
Tender self-compassion allows us to comfort and reassure ourselves when we don’t succeed, and fierce self-compassion inspires us to try again.
See if you can allow gentle self-acceptance to coexist with the active drive for self-improvement.
Tender self-compassion allows us to accept the discomfort of an unwanted task and to be nonjudgmental about our desire to put it off. Fierce self-compassion then propels us to take action so that we do what’s needed.
So why do we treat ourselves so differently than we do our friends? One reason has to do with how we deal with threats. When we notice something about ourselves that we don’t like or when we face a life challenge, we feel personally threatened.
Can you accept all these facets of yourself? Being human does not mean being better than others. Being human means you encompass the full range of human experience, the positive, the negative, and the neutral. Being human means you are average in many ways. Can you celebrate the experience of being alive on this planet in all your complexity and wonder?
One of the saddest consequences of social comparison is how we distance ourselves from people whose success makes us feel bad about ourselves.
We can’t stop our judgmental thoughts, but we don’t have to encourage or believe in them either.
Every time you catch yourself being judgmental about your unwanted trait in the future, first notice the pain of your self-judgment and give yourself compassion. Then try to reframe your inner dialogue so that it is more encouraging and supportive. Remember that if you really want to motivate yourself, love is more powerful than fear.
Unlike self-criticism, which asks if you’re good enough, self-compassion asks what’s good for you? Self-compassion taps into your inner desire to be healthy and happy. If you care about yourself, you’ll do what you need to do to in order to learn and grow. You’ll want to change unhelpful patterns of behavior, even if that means giving up certain things you like for a while.