The Power Of Being Kind To Yourself
Oscar Wilde once said, “To love oneself, is the beginning of a life-long romance,” and he was absolutely correct with this quote. Psychologist Marianna Pogosyan Ph.D. suggests that when we are succeeding, we find it easy to be kind to ourselves. When, however, we fall and are facing disappointment we become our own worst enemy. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-cultures/201802/be-kind-yourself).
Often the unkindest person to us is ourselves as we dwell on our failures, faults and missed opportunities in life. Sometimes we are cruel to ourselves for being so unkind to ourselves which frankly makes no sense at all when you stop to think. It is therefore important that we make an effort to be kind to ourselves because it can have very positive effects on our lives.
Celebrate Your Strengths
It is so easy to run through a list of the things you have done wrong, not accomplished or wish you had accomplished. This means running yourself down as a failure takes very little effort. Praising yourself, however, is more difficult but you really should try. Psychotherapist Shonda Moralis MSW, LCSW suggests that touting your own accomplishments is a great way to boost your confidence. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/breathe-mama-breathe/202009/want-boost-your-confidence).
Instead of lamenting the things you do not have and cannot do, focus on what you are good at, what you do have and what you could be capable of. We all have positives in life and when we embrace them, we build the confidence to create more good things in our future.
Self-Kindness Heals The Mind
Our mental health is often closely connected to how we feel about ourselves and negative attitudes often cause emotional issues. According to psychologist Deborah Khoshaba Psy.D. self-love is important to help us live our best lives. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-hardy/201203/seven-step-prescription-self-love).
We can find it easy sometimes to be kind to other people but often neglect ourselves assuming that others will do the job for us. This is all too often not the case so we need to take care of ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. We need to spend time thinking about what we need to be happy and making sure we do what we can to get those things. When we are happy with ourselves, we can fight depression and anxiety.
It Makes Our Relationships Better
When we do not love or respect ourselves, we often feel like we are not deserving of happiness. Often, we fill the lack of personal love by craving any show of kindness from other people. This can be a dangerous path to walk along because it can lead to bad relationships. We find ourselves excusing cruel behavior because we received occasional kindness.
When we are confident in ourselves, we treat ourselves kindly so we can recognize fake kindness when we see it. There is not so much of a need to be loved by someone else which gives us a chance to find the right people. Abusive people often seek people with low self esteem because they can be controlled but when we are kind to ourselves, we have the control.
Final Thoughts
A little bit of self kindness helps to nurture us and can lead to greater things in our future. When we focus on what we do well and what we can achieve it opens up doors for us to improve our professional lives.
If we can learn to care for and love ourselves, we become more appealing to others and more able to choose caring partners. Kindness must begin with ourselves because without that we are living a sad life.