Did you know self-kindness – also known as self-compassion – has incredible benefits for your wellbeing?
Research shows being kind to yourself:
Releases oxytocin, one of your brain’s feel-good hormones
Increases feelings of happiness and optimism
Builds resilience and the ability to bounce back from stress
Helps with letting go of disappointment
Makes it easier to move on to new challenges
Self-criticism creates a very different reaction in the brain. When we’re too hard on ourselves, the amygdala – our brain’s ‘lookout’ – may perceive this as a threat and release stress hormones. Harsh self-criticism can also trigger our brain’s fight or flight response.
Research shows spending too much time in fight or flight is detrimental to our wellbeing and can even lead to chronic stress or burnout. Self-kindness is a powerful way to dial down our fight or flight response and rewire our brain for optimism.
Self-kindness is often confused with a ‘good vibes only’ mentality – you might think it means to ‘just be positive’ or to tell yourself positive things in the mirror. Self-kindness is actually about self-acceptance – the ability to recognise your strengths and weaknesses and feel good about both. It’s about accepting yourself as you are and knowing that it’s normal to make mistakes.
Powerful self-kindness practices include:
Reframing mistakes as learning experiences
Celebrating personal accomplishments
Speaking to yourself as you would a friend
Noticing small good things in life
Prioritising sleep, diet, and exercise
Making time for things you enjoy
Self-kindness is about more than patting yourself on the back or making time for lots of self-care – though these things are great and important, too!
One of the world’s leading self-compassion researchers, Dr Kristin Neff, has identified three main elements of self-kindness.
1. Replace judgement with empathy. When something goes wrong or is difficult, our brains can be quick to judge. Instead, practice empathy. Remind yourself ‘you’re only human’ and ask yourself what you can learn from this experience, instead of jumping to judgemental thoughts such as I’m stupid or I never get things right.
2. Acknowledge our common humanity. Everyone makes mistakes, faces challenges, and struggles with self-doubt and low self-esteem from time to time. You’re not alone and nobody is perfect.
3. Try not to over-identify with emotions. When we’re struggling with something, it’s amazing how quickly our brain can jump from I failed at this to I’m a failure. Dr Kristen Neff refers to this as over-identification. She suggests observing thoughts from a non-judgemental perspective and detaching your identity from the behaviour.
You can read more about Dr Kristen Neff’s research around self-compassion at her website, self-compassion.org.