The Gate to Happiness: Self-Compassion

Photo by Shiwa Yachachin; Pexels

Follow a new path toward happiness

Some times I enjoy drinking herbal tea. A couple of the brands I’ve found have short often wise sayings on the tag of each bag of tea. One caught my interest recently: “The gate to happiness is self-compassion”. This one strikes me as particularly useful and I’ve kept it. As the saying goes: we are often our own worst enemy! Just how true that can be for me, too.

“The gate to happiness is self-compassion” seems like a good way to counter being my very own worst enemy!

Kristen Neff, a psychologist who has researched and written about self-compassion says, “Having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others.”

What is compassion?

According to Neff, compassion involves noticing that someone is suffering, being so moved by that persons suffering that your heart responds to their pain so much that you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way. Rather than judge them, you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes. You realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is just a part of being human.

What is self-compassion?

“Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment?”, Neff states.

As I think about her definition of self-compassion it makes sense to me that the gate to happiness does in fact go right through self-compassion! It can be so easy to give someone we hold dear compassion when they need it and so very hard to give that same regard to ourselves.

There is a saying—treat others the way you would like to be treated…just perhaps the real key is to treat ourselves as we would like to be treated! The reward for so doing is feeling a happiness deep within ourselves for simply being human.

How might you remember to acknowledge when you are suffering and offer comfort and care for yourself?

If you would like to learn more tools for self care of the one very important you, do Contact Me. We can journey down the ‘you deserve to take very good care of you’ path together!