Societal Acceptance
Self-compassion helps to boost people’s drive to develop themselves. Most times, self-compassion assists individuals to gravitate towards roles and functions that best suit their purpose and personality.
Psychologists often refer to self-compassion as the authentic way to live in accordance with one’s personality. Society is filled with varying standards and norms, which are claimed to guide people in their daily activities while interacting with one and other.
Nonetheless, these norms or standards have a way of limiting the overall style of an individual, thereby making one feel worthless and divergent. The overall result of these norms and standards is it makes people stuck in a spot where their true self-identity would be hidden or crushed to accommodate societal norms.
Self-Love and Confidence
Self-compassion leads people to access their errors and correcting themselves with love. It thrives in a society devoid of norms or at least having reduced norms.
According to research by the Department of Psychology at the University of California[1], it was established that having self-compassion increases the originality of a person through the reduction of worthlessness, fear, and doubt.
Using nine participants for the study, the University discovered when participants showed self-compassion to themselves, there was a greater level of security, which in turn boosted the confidence needed for interaction with others.
On days participants failed to show compassion, the reverse was the case with increased levels of insecurity at the end.
Self-Compassion Through Others Lives
Kristen Neff[2] regards having self-compassion for yourself means having self-compassion for other people. Our self-compassion is guided by the thoughts and feelings we have towards other people’s sufferings and plights.
Self-compassion lets us see the world in a different view, having increased knowledge of the occurrence of people’s difficulties in our minds. Kristen proffered a detailed list of elements that should be looked out for when identifying self-compassion in a person.
Self-Compassion and Being Human
Having Self-compassion for yourself entails a greater level of consciousness to your human side.
Professor Jia Wei Zhang[3]is of the view that society cannot offer a person self-security; only self-worth and self-compassion can offer self-security.
People should note that the world is unpredictable, things might not work out as planned, mistakes are bound to happen, rejections, failures, disappointments; all these and more should be taken as a usual occurrence in everyday living and shouldn’t be used to judge oneself.
Elements of Self-Compassion
There is an increased level of insecurity in the world today, especially amongst adolescents. Kristin succeeded in harmonizing the concept of self-compassion into three broad categories. Here are Kristin’s elements of self-compassion:
- Common Humanity against Isolation
- Mindfulness against Over identification
- Self-Kindness against Self-Judgement
1 – Common Humanity against Isolation
Kristin is of the view that usually people want things to work out the way they planned them. The frustration of not getting things exactly as planned leads to a sense of irrational isolation. Your mind plays tricks on you, as though you were the only one making mistakes or going through difficulty.
According to Kristien, “all humans suffer,” the very fact one is human means one has the tendency to fail, be rejected, be imperfect, and worse, die.
Consequently, self-compassion is the art of understanding that suffering and being imperfect is a part of common humanity- an experience that is all felt by every human rather than just yourself.
2 – Mindfulness against Over Identification
Kristin believes that self-compassion requires balancing negative emotions in order not to suppress our feelings or exaggerations.
We should always maintain an equilibrium that stems from our personal experiences with other persons who are suffering, this offers us a larger perspective in life.
Our emotions should also be observed with clarity and an open mind so that it is placed in awareness of the things around us. Mindfulness requires that our minds are free from thoughts and feelings of pain so that we would not be thrown away by negative thoughts.
3 – Self-Kindness against Self-Judgement
Self-compassion demands understanding to oneself when suffering comes, imperfectness, failure, or any other decline in life.
Research from the Harvard Business School in 2013 revealed that accepting the possibility of failure in a business is surprisingly key to the overall success of the business.
Self-compassionate people understand that imperfectness and failure are part of everyday occurrences, so they invariably avoid judging themselves for a wrong made or suffering faced. When this reality of suffering and imperfectness is accepted, people face life with kindness and emotional strength.
Self-compassion has been a concept not embraced by many. The very thought of love, kindness, and encouragement given to oneself goes a long way in affecting your security of mind and person.
The surroundings one finds himself in also affect the general feeling you give to your personality.
[1] Managing Yourself, Juliana Breines et al.
[2] Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff.
[3] Of the University of Memphis
