Being Kind to Yourself Through Self-Compassion

“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.”
~ Lama Yeshe

Life is crazy busy, you are completely overwhelmed and you feel like you just cannot keep up and do it all. You feel like you are failing.  Maybe you feel frozen and paralyzed because it all just seems like too much. Either way, you feel like you have failed to keep up with the demands of life.  


Dishes piling up, a mountain of clothes to be washed, a house to be cleaned, relationships to be nurtured, work demands, commitments to other activities, so on and so forth. 


There you are, in the middle of this tornado occurring around you, trying to keep up, and you just can’t. Everything doesn’t get done and who get’s blamed for it? YOU! 


We demand a lot of ourselves and the reality is that we are human and just can only expect so much of ourselves. We can’t expect perfection. Somewhere, in the middle of all of the chaos, we have to stop and give ourselves a little compassion and grace. Understanding that we can’t do everything and that we can only expect so much of ourselves. 

1. What areas of your life are you expecting too much of yourself?
2. Can anything be put off for a day, so that you can have some down time for yourself? 
3. What does that down time look like? 
4. How can you start to set some realistic expectations of yourself? 
5. How can you offer yourself grace and compassion?

We can give someone else the shirt off our back, but when it comes to us needing a little grace, we struggle to be able to offer it to ourselves. 


“Being self-compassionate means that whether you win or lose, surpass your sky-high expectations or fall short, you still extend the same kindness and sympathy toward yourself, just like you would a good friend.”
~ Kristin Neff 

Read more on how to provide yourself grace and compassion. 

Be gentle on yourself this week, 
Brittany Wingfield