The transformative power of self compassion

What if you stopped being your own drill sergeant?

The book that utterly changed the course of my life when I first read it three years ago is Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff.

She makes a direct research-backed case for why and how compassion and kindness are better motivating factors for us than the shame and guilt cycle that many of us, including myself, are used to.

When I first read this book, I'll admit I was deeply skeptical. I don't remember what convinced me to give the book a try. In hindsight I'm surprised I did, considering how foreign its thesis felt.

I knew nothing other than being hard on myself.

My self-talk was a combination of angry, irritable parent and military drill sergeant. I thought it was necessary to speak to myself this way in order to motivate myself.

Whether it was about diet or exercise, or showing up for my commitments at work and in my social life, that was the voice.

It was all that I knew.

I saw no reason to think it was doing anything other than working for me.

It was how things were.

But as I was reading this book, I could feel sectors of my heart and brain softening, and growing a little bit open to possibility.

First, Dr. Neff's sensible words forced me to confront the obvious-on-its-face reality that it's emotionally healthier to be treated with kindness and compassion than shame and guilt, whether by other people or ourselves. I don't know that I had been made to stare at this truth before.

To my surprise, it began dawning on me that there was something to her argument that — maybe, perhaps, it's possible, conceivably? — you can get better long-term, more sustainable results with compassion and kindness than with shame and guilt.

I looked at the ways in my life in which I was using these weapons against myself.

Sure, treating myself this way about my body and my diet, for instance, might work for three or four weeks. Sometimes it might get me short-term results for a bit longer.

But inevitably I'd exhaust my ability to keep it up, which would lead to self-sabotage, about which I'd be even harder on myself.

I started seeing that I was living a self-perpetuating cycle of being mean and unkind to myself.

I had to confront the reality that while this act had in weird way been keeping me afloat all these years, it wasn't sustainable.

It wasn't in alignment with who I wanted to be, or even the ways in which I showed up for the other people in my life, whom I treated with kindness and compassion while expecting they'd show up for me similarly.

I wasn't affording myself the same courtesy.

Even as I accepted these realizations, I continue clinging to the idea that this act of being hard on myself got results sometimes. I thought that when my back was up against the wall with a project, and I had to play the role of my own drill sergeant, it brought out my best work.

But then I had an uncomfortable thought.

Is that true?

Because sure, when I procrastinated and I get something done at the last minute, it might feel like I did a good job. I'd experience the satisfaction of coming through at the end, of at least feeling like I at least did a good enough job to not get fired or to not utterly fail.

Wait.

Had I ever interrogated that idea?

Was it a truth about the quality of my work, or merely a story I had been telling myself for a long time?

What would it look like to motivate myself with kindness and compassion and encouragement to do a good job on something and not wait until the last minute and need to be my own nagging parent?

I decided to try, as an experiment, to treat myself like my own advocate and embody an encouraging voice for a week.

That ended up being the most wonderful week.

I got an magnificent amount of work done — and I felt good about myself during the whole process!

I could even see that I was building habits that might be sustainable.

It was the most addicting feeling.

Three years later, I've never wanted to let it go.

Dr. Neff's book Self-Compassion has been foundational for me, and I've gifted it to more people than I can count.