How to Practice Mindful Self-Compassion Every Day (& Why You Should)
Research has confirmed that practicing mindfulness can help us increase our focus and mental clarity and become more attuned to our physical selves. Regular mindfulness practice can also teach us to become more adept at detaching ourselves from our thoughts and emotions and observing them without judgment. It can boost our mood and alleviate the adverse effects of stress, anxiety, and depression.
But what exactly is mindful self-compassion? Or, how might practicing mindfulness lead to greater self-love and compassion?
What is Mindful Self-Compassion?
Mindful self-compassion (MSC) is a practice that blends mindfulness skills with the emotional practice of self-compassion to improve our mental health and emotional well-being. The main goal of mindfulness is to increase your awareness of the present. At the same time, self-compassion teaches you to treat yourself with acceptance, love, kindness, and forgiveness.
Mindful self-compassion boosts your resilience during challenging times by allowing you to accept your imperfections, understand that flaws are commonplace in the human experience, and learn from your mistakes.
Self-compassion is the first step toward self-love and emotional well-being. It may help you cope with stress, release shame, guilt, and resentment, accept responsibility for yourself, and forgive yourself.
Breaking Down the Connection Between Mindfulness and Self-Compassion
Mindfulness represents a nonjudgmental and receptive state of mind. It allows you to notice and accept your self-critical thoughts and feelings without judging or responding to them in any way.
When you can give your emotions your full attention without repressing them or allowing them to overwhelm you, your self-acceptance will drive you to treat yourself more gently.
So, mindfulness teaches you to treat yourself without evaluation or judgment. It enables you to acknowledge your suffering and treat yourself with compassion, acceptance, and kindness rather than responding with self-criticism.
In short, mindfulness is an effective way to develop self-awareness, non-judgmentally explore your difficulties, alleviate emotional distress, and increase your self-compassion.
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How Mindful Self-Compassion Fosters a Growth Mindset
Mindful self-compassion promotes a growth mindset by motivating us to strive for change and improvement. While those with a fixed mindset believe that their abilities, intelligence, and character attributes are unchangeable, people with a growth mindset view these qualities as flexible.
In addition, growth-oriented people believe that their skills and personal traits can be improved with practice, effort, and time.
Research suggests that self-compassion nurtures a growth mindset by encouraging people to work harder to learn from past mistakes and improve themselves. In addition, people who care about themselves react better to negative feedback and use it to improve their skills and grow.
So, if you learn to treat yourself with self-compassion, you will be more likely to overcome self-criticism and instead look for ways to improve yourself.
8 Ways to Practice Mindful Self-Compassion Every Day
Self-compassion is something you can learn and practice. So, here are eight ways to improve your life by practicing mindful self-compassion daily.
1. Know When to Let Go
Freeing yourself from shame, guilt, and self-criticism is essential to mindful self-compassion. Self-forgiveness means knowing when to let go. It is a deliberate decision to release negative emotions aimed at yourself.
So, pay attention to your shame, resentment, and guilt. By actively identifying self-defeating ideas without judgment, you will begin to understand rather than blame yourself. After you acknowledge unpleasant feelings, let them float away. Then you can replace these negative feelings with empathy, compassion, and love for yourself.
2. Silence Your Inner Critic
Most of the time, we are our own harshest critics. Being mindful of your self-judgmental thoughts is the first step in breaking free from them. To silence your inner critic, learn to identify what sets off these self-critical thoughts. Then question their validity without passing judgment. Once you know how to detach yourself from such studies, your inner critic will lose its power over you.
3. Keep a Daily Journal
Journaling can be a great way to determine what makes your inner critic arise. When you write down your thoughts, you can see if they are valid and become more aware of how they make you feel. Self-acceptance and self-compassion both start with this kind of awareness.
4. The “How Would You Treat a Friend” Exercise
Consider a loved one or a close friend who is in distress. Perhaps they failed an important exam, were passed over for a promotion at work, or broke a relationship because they were unfaithful.
Consider what you would say to them. How would you demonstrate your concern and support for them? Would you pass judgment or attempt to understand where they stood in life? Then, consider yourself in the same circumstances. What do you tell yourself?
Compare your two replies and consider (better yet, write down) how you would like to be treated in a similar circumstance.
This easy exercise will help you understand how you would treat someone you care about in a difficult situation so that you can apply this approach to yourself in a similar scenario.
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5. Embrace & Express Gratitude
Think of the good things in your life as “gifts.” Don’t take anything for granted. When you make it a habit to be thankful, you show appreciation for what is important to you. This may motivate you to improve yourself, make you more optimistic, and silence your inner critic.
6. Adopt a Growth Mindset
A professional life coach can teach you to reframe mistakes as learning opportunities, live with your inner critic, and use self-compassion to encourage you to be a better person.
7. Stop Fearing Failure
Failures teach us valuable life lessons. You will no longer fear failure when you learn to treat yourself with kindness. Mindful self-compassion will motivate you to turn your shortcomings into opportunities for self-development.
8. Practice Forgiveness
Understanding common humanity is critical in the process of forgiving others and yourself. Considering the greater human picture might assist you in overcoming self-criticism and offering yourself kindness and empathy.
Building Happiness Starts with Self-Compassion
Treating yourself with compassion leads to increased self-esteem, self-love, and happiness. It assists you in forgiving yourself, learning from your mistakes, adopting a growth mindset, and constantly improving yourself.
Coaching may help cultivate self-forgiveness by teaching strategies to smooth the process and make mindfulness-based self-compassion a habit. If you want to integrate mindful self-compassion into your daily life, grow, and build your happiness, contact me to set up a free empowering conversation.
