On Deserving Kindness from Ourselves: Life Lessons about Self-Compassion and Self-Worth

By Sara delos Reyes

When the voice inside your head talks, what does it sound like?

Are these private one-on-one conversations comforting and calming? Or are they sharp and critical, and every exchange is focused on everything you're not and you've done wrong?

The quality of self-talk we engage in is a pretty good indicator of how much we practice self-compassion and the sense of self-worth we've developed. Truly, we all have the capability to become our own safe spaces or our fiercest critics.

"Be kind," we say, or "Understand and empathize"-but almost always with others in mind. One of our goals then is to be able to apply these words to how we treat ourselves as easily as we would others. After all, there's no one more deserving of kindness than the person looking right back at you in the mirror. And most often, the person whose words matter most to us are those that come straight from within ourselves.

Self-compassion 101

When we talk about self-compassion, it's really not all that different from having compassion towards others. It usually starts with being able to identify suffering; when we see a friend not being themselves because of a tough life situation, that's compassion. When we're able to initiate non-work talk with an office acquaintance after noticing them behaving differently, that's compassion, too. Asking a relative "How are you?" when we sense they're having a bad day is yet another way we practice compassion.

Self-compassion, then, is recognizing suffering in ourselves. It's being able to say, "I am having a hard time, and I'm not at my best right now." It's all about knowing when we're not okay and being able to admit that to ourselves.

But compassion extends beyond recognition. It requires that when we acknowledge our emotional and mental pains and aches, we do so without judgment, without pressure, without force.

Building from the example above, we'll ask you this: would you tell a friend dealing with unexpected loss, perhaps loss of a relationship or a job, "to get over themselves" or "to move on and stop exaggerating" their reactions? You likely would not, because you're aware that those are downright mean things to say and that they exacerbate, rather than alleviate, someone else's pain. Instead, you may offer a listening ear, your genuine company, and allow them to go through the healing process at their own pace.

Self-compassion is mirroring these positive behaviors in our relationship with ourselves. When we have periods of suffering, we should be able to tell ourselves that our sadness, our worries, our anger, and our fears are valid. Allowing ourselves to be upset is not wallowing or weakness-it's reacting in normal and expected ways when we come face to face with difficult situations.

Before we continue, do this brief exercise: pinch a bit of skin on your forearm. What is it that you feel? You feel the softness of flesh and the life that keeps it warm and supple. Congratulations! You've just confirmed that you are, indeed, human. And because of this, you as a living and breathing being will inevitably cycle through life's peaks and valleys-the whole range of human experiences. So understand that when you find yourself at a low point, it's the most human thing to feel all these feelings and think all these thoughts that speak of your suffering. They're as natural as every inhale and exhale you make.

Self-compassion is being able to remind ourselves of this; as human beings, we inescapably encounter unpleasant things in life, and the reactions that follow speak of this inherent humanity. This applies to every single human being that has lived, is living, and has yet to live. No one, not even yourself, can refute this.

Self-compassion in our day-to-day

Now that you know a little more about self-compassion, let's practice some ways to live it out in our day-to-day.

You may eventually realize that self-compassion is most needed when we fail. Self-compassion is effortless when things are going well.

But when we make mistakes, when we don't meet expectations, or when we judge ourselves for being insufficient, these are the times the voice in our heads becomes its most malicious. We get stuck in a cycle of believing we're deeply inadequate, making it the hardest thing to still value ourselves in the midst of personal misgivings.

And because mistakes and failures of every size are part and parcel of life, it's important that we learn to reframe our experiences of them in the context of having self-compassion.

Making mistakes is awful. And while it's great to have accountability of our actions that contributed to them, we draw the line between having healthy accountability and blaming ourselves for our failures.

Self-blame is the enemy of self-compassion. When we engage in self-blame, we belittle ourselves and judge ourselves so harshly that we end up feeling small and that we can't seem to get anything right. We lose trust and confidence in ourselves.

Self-compassion remedies this by going back to a point made earlier. Mistakes are part of the human reality; unavoidably, life does not always go our way and our visions of success may not always materialize. This can hurt (a lot), but it is always, always important to be gentle with ourselves no matter what. After we've allowed ourselves to feel bad as we talked about above, the next step is not turning inward and blaming ourselves for messing up.

Here's a truth we must never forget: we were never made to be perfect. And while we strive to achieve our own versions of perfection in several life domains, the journey is steep and sometimes perilous. If we trip and fall, we nurse ourselves back to health and try our best to salve our wounds. Besides, you wouldn't force a physical injury to heal and disappear-wouldn't it be amazing if we practiced the same attitude towards invisible injuries, wounds of the heart and mind, when we incur them?

This is how we begin to practice self-compassion in the realest way: by remembering that failures and mistakes happen regardless of how hard we try to prevent them. And that when we're confronted with them-because we will, sooner or later-we acknowledge that they do not define us. We accept the imperfection of our humanness, and we find comfort in understanding that this is just the way we are; we are not less for making mistakes, but simply, human.

Flexing your self-worth muscle

When we're able to make self-compassion a habit, we grow a sense of self-worth.

Self-worth is what allows us to rise above negative situations and separate ourselves from the events that happen around us. It's best embodied by a statement that goes something like this: "I may have failed today, but that doesn't make me see myself as any less or make me less deserving of respect and being valued."

More so, having self-worth comes from within ourselves; we do not depend on others to make evaluations of our worthiness nor wait for their judgment of our character to help us figure out how we feel about ourselves. Self-worth is one hundred percent your opinion about you.

With self-compassion that allows us to be kind to ourselves, our sense of self-worth can be strengthened. When we learn that failures and misfortune do not define us, we grow to become people who believe in ourselves and can rise above mistakes and seek self-improvement.

What we learned as small children remains to be true years later: kindness can go far and do great things. We simply expand this truth of life by learning that kindness is not reserved for those around us, but apply to ourselves, too!