Be Kind to Yourself

I’ve noticed a couple of things happening in the world recently.

The first is, there’s a fashion for ‘taking care of yourself’. It might be by pampering yourself, having a spa day, going on holiday, treating yourself to a new piece of clothing or eating something you know isn’t really good for you. It might mean taking time out for yourself, to do something you want to do, just for you. It might mean spending more than you can really afford ‘because you’re worth it!’

‘Taking care of yourself’ sounds like an excellent idea to me — although I am deeply suspicious that some of these things cost quite a lot of money. The marketing industry really knows how to touch those nerves — and ‘taking care of yourself’ is definitely something that gets sales up!

So here’s the second thing I’ve noticed.

That while we’re spending time and money on taking care of ourselves in a whole range of (mostly) material ways. we’re simultaneously engaged in criticising and judging ourselves and finding ourselves lacking in many different ways.

Maybe that’s why we need taking care of in the first place?

Let me explain.

We set ourselves targets to meet, and criticise ourselves for getting there too slowly. Nothing except the final, world-changing result is enough. We look at our achievements, whether it’s our exam results, our success at work, our habits, our parenting abilities, how popular we are, our personalities, our weight, and compare them with everyone else’s — and surprise, surprise, some of them don’t seem to measure up.

So we start on at ourselves — why are you so stupid? Why can’t you get this right? Why are you still doing this even though you know it’s wrong? What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you just try harder? Why can’t you get it right?

This reminds me of one of my earlier podcasts — number 5 — entitled ‘You won’t solve your problems by yelling at yourself.’ It’s the same thing.

Yelling at other people, being rude to them, or trying to force them to do stuff because we think it’s good for them (and us!) doesn’t seem to work. So neither does this relentless barrage of criticism of ourselves. It just makes us feel hopeless, and worthless. Nothing good comes from that place.

What’s the alternative? The alternative is to be kind to ourselves. To recognise that we are doing the best we can, however poor it might look to us right now.

Most people I speak to are unwilling to do that because as they say: ‘How am I ever going to make it better if I don’t try to change it?’ But that sort of ‘trying to change it’ doesn’t work. Self-criticism is not helping to change anything for the better — it’s just beating yourself into a hopeless state.

Being kind to yourself looks to me like this. Noticing the things we actually do well. Noticing the five times we got it right, not just the one time we got it wrong. Recognising when we make a small improvement, or do our habitual thing a bit less. Not waiting to be perfect before we give ourselves a bit of praise.

Imagine the baby who stands up to try walking for the first time. What if we all said — ‘Huh that was rubbish. You didn’t even take a step and you were down on your bottom again.’ Not much incentive to try again. It sounds crazy doesn’t it, but that’s essentially what we’re saying to ourselves?

What? Only a pass, not an A* How useless! No weight lost this week despite eating all that salad — you’re hopeless! Went to the party but didn’t talk to many people — weird? Tried to be patient with that annoying colleague but still ended up snapping…

If a friend said these things to you, I think you know what you’d probably say back.

‘You passed. It’s good enough to do what you want to do next.’; ‘You enjoyed talking to the two people you did, right? You had a good time?; You’re getting better with that colleague — last time you shouted at him!

Why do we say that? Because it’s encouraging — because we recognise that they are doing their best, and that by noticing that, they can build on it to take the next step. Because we know that if we said ‘Yeah. You’re pretty useless’ that wouldn’t actually be in the least bit helpful to them.

So what if we started showing that sort of kindness to ourselves? What if we just give ourselves a chance to make mistakes and also get some things right — and then move forward from there.

Because if all the time and energy we put into criticising and berating ourselves was instead spent on taking the next step, or looking for another opportunity, or actually doing anything else at all, our lives would immediately improve.

It’s worth a try don’t you think? Next time you find you’re being hard on yourself, just ease off. Remember it’s not helping. Go and do something else instead!

And if you do ease off the constant barrage of self-criticism, maybe you’ll notice that you don’t need to do so many of those external ‘taking care of yourself’ activities to try to make yourself feel better. Maybe you’ll just be feeling better already.

And then you can choose what you’d really like to do. Just because it’s fun. Not because you need taking care of.

Just be kind to yourself from the start.