How do you do Compassion?
Hi
Here is Part 3 of my series on a topic that I believe is crucial for every person's wellbeing. (Parts 1 & 2 can be found here)
I'm very passionate about sharing, exploring and promoting self-compassion because of its significant impact on our mental health as well as the ripple effect this has on others around us.
In this instalment, I will expand and delve into
How do you do self-compassion?
I would like to share a personal experience to illustrate a situation where I initially started at a place of self-punishment and ultimately transitioned towards practising self-compassion and the impact that had on my mental wellbeing.
About 7 years ago I did a presentation on Mindfulness to a corporate audience at an Insurance Company.
This was my one of my first presentations in the health and wellness field since my move out of the corporate world.
I was so so nervous and I couldn't believe it.
When I arrived, I realised that the company was located in a building that I used to work at back in my corporate life. I didn’t have such fond memories of that time of my life.
I was feeling quite out of my depth here not completely knowing what I was going to be presenting. I wanted to share a message slightly differently to what you would call traditional Mindfulness.
I managed to breathe through those feelings of lack of confidence, attempt to put on a thick skin and just do it.
I actually felt that I did ok. People asked questions and were engaged and they didn't seem to want to leave.
That night I received a phone call from the company that placed me for the presentation and they told me that the manager from the Insurance company said that they no longer wanted to engage me for any future presentations.
I was devastated!!
I was embarrassed and shocked and I felt intense shame.
I hung up the phone and I started telling myself off for doing this and that “wrong”.
You know the questions we fire off to ourselves -
Why did you say that?
Why didn't you say this?
Why did you do that?
Why didn't you do that?
How could you do that?
Why do you put yourself in these situations?
Then the words of punishment:
You are just no good at this
You are no good at anything
You are so stupid
You don't belong here
You are an imposter
I recall bawling my eyes out, getting into my car and just driving.
I decided to drive to a good friend of mine.
She felt like the right person to speak to in this moment.
I just knew this friend would completely understand me, what happened and what I was going through. Instinctively I was reaching out for compassion, love and understanding even if I didn't realise that at the time.
Deep down we all want compassion, love and understanding.
She allowed me to speak and she just listened. And I had a huge and very significant insight from that conversation.
My friend held space for me to process what I was going through so I could have the realisations that I had.
She never shamed me, judged me or told me that I was not good.
She didn't tell me what to do, give me a solution or invalidate my feelings.
I believe this is what led me to my most significant realisation.
My intuition was right, she was the exact friend I needed in the moment to support me.
I left her house giving myself so much compassion and seeing a completely different perspective.
I went from punishing myself and falling down a very dark hole.
I had so much shame and I felt so embarrassed.
I felt that I would have to hide my face if I saw any of these people again.
Once the self-compassion flooded in I suddenly realised that I was not my presentation.
This realisation has immense significance - more than I knew at the time.
I WAS NOT MY PRESENTATION
What exactly does that mean?
It means that we recognise our self worth as separate to our performance, to what we do or achieve. It means that we realise in that moment that our self worth just is, we don’t have to do anything to get it, it’s a given.
When we are connected to our self worth we feel calmer, more secure and more at peace. (More on self worth for another time, that’s another big one that needs its own time to shine!!)
My shift wasn't possible without having self-compassion.
My presentation didn't say anything about who I am. Sure I could have done things differently if I could have but that doesn’t say anything about my innate worth as a human being.
My presentation cannot impact my sense of self worth.
I had so many reasons to give myself compassion.
At this time my self-compassion muscle was weak but I could feel it begin to strengthen from this experience.
I could see that:
I hadn’t done this before
If I could have done better I would have done better. We always do the best we can with where we are at – and there is always room for growth and evolution
It takes time to improve and I can practise more
I know I connected with some people as they didn’t want to leave
It was a triggering situation being in my old work building
I did it - I gave it a go and put myself out there and that's something to celebrate
I just knew, my intuition felt that this manager's opinion was not the opinion of everyone and not everyone will like me or what I have to say. That's just the plain truth
And from this place of compassion I managed to pull myself out of the hole.
It felt very wobbly as I was not used to giving myself Self-compassion but I could feel the difference.
The place of punishment was draining me of energy - firing all those questions to myself just made me feel worse and tired and I had inertia.
Once I moved to a place of Compassion I felt softer, more at peace and I was able to reflect. And ideas and realisations were coming to me and I felt more positive. I think that's what you can call thriving.
In this example when I gave myself compassion I opened up and felt so much better.
When we feel better it's easier to see things more positively.
Compassion is a muscle you need to build and something you need to consciously practise.
When I was caught in self-punishment, I was consumed by negativity, and negativity
I know when I withhold compassion from myself I am suffering. I am hurting and am probably not turning up to life in the way I want with kindness and understanding.
I am full of punishment and will be short with my loved ones and then I'm impacting not just me but others around me. And I definitely don't want to do that.
Again from Katherine Morgan Schaflers book ‘The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control’ “You can’t be as patient, creative, strong, loving, or reliable when you’re punishing yourself—you can’t be you”tends to perpetuate itself unless you introduce compassion to break that cycle.
Once you focus on one negative experience, you are more likely to paint everything you do and every experience you have with that same tainted brush. Like everything you do is shit and then your whole life becomes shit too and everything can come crashing down.
Unless you can practise STOPPING yourself, shifting your focus to one of compassion.
If you are not responding to your mistakes from compassion you are responding from self-punishment.
I get it this may feel really confronting as it's a completely different message to one we usually hear.
Another beautiful quote from the book “Exercising self-compassion is one of our greatest powers; it will change your life.”
And to me that's worth my time, attention and energy to bring more self-compassion into my life
I invite you to be curious…
I invite you to replay a situation where you were punishing yourself and reflect ways to rewrite that experience by bringing in self-compassion
What are some ways you can practise more self-compassion?
As always, if you feel called to share anything I'd love to hear from you. Click here to message me.
Hope you’re having a wonderful day