Welcome to The Simplify Your Life Podcast, where we talk about how to create a life you won’t need an escape from! I’m Coach Simona, author of the book “111 Ways to Simplify Your Life”, and I’m glad you decided to tune in! In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to be kinder to yourself, and I’m going to share with you 6 bulletproof ways to practice self-compassion, starting today.
Now, before we get into my actual tips on how to be kinder to yourself, let’s spend a few seconds talking about why we struggle with self-kindness in the first place. One of the possible reasons is having a harsh inner critical voice, which means we have intrusive negative thoughts and unhelpful beliefs about ourselves. Our inner critic is the internalized voice of our parents, primary caretakers, or teachers. It’s not us.
The problem is the negative narrative we’ve created about ourselves: the most repetitive negative thoughts we hear on a daily basis are the ones that form our beliefs.
Which brings me to the second possible reason for struggling to be kind to yourself: Not having a healthy example of self-kindness growing up If your parents or primary caretakers prided themselves on being “strong”, not showing any emotions, keeping their struggles and worries, or being too hard on themselves, you might have picked up on these behaviors in your developmental years.
If you’ve perceived showing emotions as being weak, it might take you some time to reframe this belief, and learn how to practice self-compassion, but will talk more about that later on in this episode. And the third most common reason for not being kind to yourself is thinking that being critical of yourself is helping you grow - This is an interesting one.
There are two ways to incentivize human behavior: you reward the behavior you want to repeat, and punish the behavior that you’d like to stop. Some of us grow up thinking that being hard on yourself pushes you to be excellent, and achieve more. The problem is that when you’re punishing yourself every single time you try to be kind and compassionate to yourself, at some point, self-compassion becomes a completely foreign behavior to you, and you have no idea how to do it anymore.
Okay, now that we’ve explored the three main reasons for not being kind to yourself, let’s get into the 6 ways you can learn to actually practice self-compassion: Keep the commitments you make to yourself If you’re not used to being kind to yourself, that’s a clear sign that you’re not prioritizing your own well-being, so the first step to changing that is starting small by keeping the commitments you make to yourself.
For example, instead of committing to writing the best novel in the world in the next 30 days, commit to writing 100 words per day. Another example of keeping the commitments you make to yourself is to not be neglectful when it comes to your basic needs and self-care. We often focus on pleasing everyone around us and spend so much time and energy trying to figure out their needs, instead of asking ourselves one simple question: What do I need?
So, I want you to think of all the times you’ve neglected yourself in the past week. You can even pause this episode and write down what comes to mind. Did you promise to spend extra 10 minutes on your skincare routine, but work got in the way? Or wanted to cook yourself a delicious meal but decided to cancel because you thought you weren’t worth the extra time and effort? Think about all the times you’ve neglected yourself and start small.
Commit to 10 minutes for yourself today, where you’re going to take care of whatever needs to be taken care of when it comes to you. No-guilt tripping, just being kind and respectful towards your needs and wishes. Once you start keeping these small, daily commitments, you’ll begin to trust yourself more, and that, in turn, will help you be kinder to yourself. Now, let’s get into my next tip on how to be kinder to yourself: Accept your imperfections We all have flaws and weaknesses.
That’s what makes us human. As a recovering perfectionist, I know how easy it can be to start beating yourself up over every mistake and think that no matter how much you work on something, it’s never quite ready to be released. But the problem with perfectionism is that it’s robbing you of your individuality. It’s turning you into this vanilla, cookie-cutter, perfect image of someone that doesn’t really exist.
This doesn’t mean you can’t work on improving yourself, becoming more self-aware, and generally being a better version of yourself. The important thing is to know that we’re always going to be a “work in progress,” and your desire for growth shouldn’t stem from the fear of not being perfect or good enough, but your willingness to become a better human being every single day by working on yourself.
Now let’s get into my third tip on how to be kinder to yourself, which is to Journal If you’re new to journaling, let me put your mind at ease: you don’t need anything special to get started. All you need is 10 minutes of uninterrupted time, a pen, and a piece of paper. There are many journaling exercises that you can try, but I’m going to recommend to start with three simple questions: Question #1: What do I want my relationship with myself to look like?
Describe the relationship you want to have with yourself: How would you show up for yourself differently? How would you soothe yourself when life gets tough? What will your life look like once you put yourself first and prioritize meeting your emotional needs? 2. What small step can I take to be kinder to myself today? If you had to do just one small thing today to give yourself some love, what would you do?
Here are some suggestions to get you inspired: spend 30 minutes doing something just for yourself; next time you feel like judging yourself, pause, reflect, and choose a more loving thought instead; take that long relaxing bath that you've been postponing because you needed to take care of everyone else first. 3. What do I need to work on when it comes to my relationship with myself? Are you being too critical of yourself? Afraid of making mistakes? Are you neglecting your needs?
These three journaling questions were directly taken from The Self-Love Toolkit, which is my proven step-by-step framework that will help you learn to love yourself unconditionally.
If you want to get instant access and get your hands on some exclusive bonuses, head over to: www.theselflovetoolkit.com The fourth way you can practice self-compassion is to forgive yourself When you find it hard to be kind to yourself, you often carry a lot of shame, guilt, and other difficult emotions that you need to let go of first. So I want you to be honest with yourself and think about all the negative stories you’ve been playing in your mind on repeat daily.
Do you feel guilty for being a bad daughter, partner, or mother? In what ways are you shaming yourself and not letting yourself succeed? How can you forgive yourself for past mistakes and realize that we’re all flawed, and that’s just part of being human? When you forgive yourself, you’re going to open up to all the healing that needs to happen for you to embrace yourself as you are and love yourself unconditionally.
If you have a lot of resistance when it comes to forgiving yourself, listen to episode 125 next. I will leave a link below. Tip number 5 is to Be patient with yourself For me, personally, this was the hardest one to work on. I was SO impatient with myself and others, to the point of constantly feeling like I was behind on time, energy, or effort. I was in this never-ending cycle of running, even though I had no idea why I always felt so rushed and overwhelmed.
Now I know that it was my belief I needed to be the best at something to be worth anything. It took me many years to realize that I was worthy just because I was born. Your worth is inherent. You don’t have to rush all the time to prove yourself. You don’t need to surround yourself with ticking clocks just because you feel like life is slipping by. All you need to do is be patient with yourself. Give yourself that extra 5 minutes to finish your lunch before running off to the next task.
Or perhaps spend 1 hour in bed on a lazy Sunday morning. By being patient with yourself, you’ll start appreciating life more, and you’ll definitely improve the relationship you have with yourself. So, what’s the first step you can take to be patient with yourself: give yourself more time than you think you’re going to need. For example, next time you’re getting ready to go out, start a bit earlier. Or give yourself a couple of hours more to finish that project.
That will help you not rush yourself as much and build a healthier relationship with yourself that is based on self-respect and trust. The sixth way you can practice self-compassion is to Accept that all of your emotions are valid What do I mean by this? When you feel sad or angry, you may feel uncomfortable expressing these emotions or even admitting that you have them. So what you can do to start accepting your emotions as valid is sit with them and let them pass through you.
Instead of trying to run away from them, just sit in a quiet place where you know you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes and observe them. See them for what they truly are: just sensations pacing through your body. You don’t need to attach a story to them, you don’t even need to repeat the narrative over and over again. That’s just your mind talking to itself. What you can do instead is breathe through them. Let them come to the surface. And simply observe what happens.
The key to practicing self-compassion is to learn to be soft, gentle, and kind towards yourself throughout this journey. And here comes my bonus tip, which is to Have realistic expectations If you expect to become kinder to yourself overnight after years of being mean to yourself, that is simply not going to happen. But, if you take 15 minutes every day to work on reframing your negative thoughts, and learning how to be gentle and kind to yourself, you will start seeing results very soon.
When you’re struggling with self-kindness, that often means that you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. You’re forcing it. And as a defense mechanism, a big part of you is resisting it. I get it. It’s hard. But it doesn’t have to be. All you need to do is take a few steps in the right direction every single day. Thanks so much for tuning in! If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please like it, subscribe, and I will see you in the next one.