Practice Self-Compassion

This article was published in Harvard Business Review, a credible and valuable source in the field of business.

Author: Christopher Germer

If a good friend tells you about an ordeal they’re facing or a mistake they’ve made, how do you typically respond? In all likelihood, you’ll offer kindness and comfort, perhaps speaking in a warm and soothing tone, and maybe offering a hug to show how much you care. When your friend recovers and the conversation continues, chances are that you’ll expand your support by encouraging your friend to take necessary action or try to discover how to steer clear of similar difficulties in the future.

Now reflect for a moment how you might you treat yourself when you make a big mistake or experience a setback. It’s likely that you’d be much tougher on yourself—that you’d spring to self-criticism (“I’m such an idiot!”), hide in embarrassment or shame (“Ugggh!”), or ruminate for a long time about your perceived shortcomings or bad luck (“Why me? Why did this happen to me?”). When things go wrong in our lives, we tend to become our own worst enemy.

To recover emotionally and get back on your feet, however, there’s a different approach you can take: self-compassion.

I’ve been working with mindfulness in my psychotherapy practice for over 30 years. It is a powerful resource that helps us stay present and focused on the task at hand. I’ve come to realize, however, that a component of mindfulness that is essential for emotional resilience is often overlooked. In particular, when we fail in a big way, we’re likely to become engulfed in shame and our sense of self is dismantled. We all know what this feels like—we’re unable to think straight, temporarily suspended in time and place, dislocated from our bodies, and uncertain who we really are. Shame has a way of wiping out the very observer who is needed to be mindful of our situation.

What does it take to rescue yourself and begin to address the situation in an effective manner? You need to treat yourself with the same kindness and support as you’d provide for a dear friend.

A substantial and growing body of research shows that this self-compassion is closely associated with emotional resilience, including the ability to soothe ourselves, recognize our mistakes and learn from them, and motivate ourselves to succeed. Self-compassion is also consistently correlated with a wide range of measures of emotional well-being such as optimism, life satisfaction, autonomy, and wisdom, and with reduced anxiety, depression, stress, and feelings of shame.

To achieve these benefits, self-compassion must include three components, according to my colleague and pioneering self-compassion researcher, Kristin Neff:

• Mindfulness: Awareness of what’s going on in the present moment. To be kind to ourselves, first we need to know that we’re struggling while we’re struggling. It also helps to name the emotions we’re feeling in tricky situations and to ground ourselves in the here and now (sensations, sounds, sights). These are all skills associated with mindfulness that make space for a compassionate response.

• Common humanity: Knowing we’re not alone. Most of us tend to hide in shame when things go really wrong in our lives, or we hide from ourselves through distraction or with a few stiff drinks. The antidote is recognizing our common humanity—understanding that many others would feel the same way in similar situations, and that we’re not the only ones who suffer in life.

• Self-kindness: A kind and warm-hearted response to ourselves. This can take many forms, such as a gentle hand over the heart, validating how we feel, talking to ourselves in an encouraging manner, or by a simple act of kindness such as drinking a cup of tea or listening to music.

When we feel threatened, our nervous system is awash in adrenaline and thus goes into overdrive. When we’re in this state, showing ourselves care and kindness is usually the last thing we’re inclined to do. When we experience positive, warm connections, however, our system releases oxytocin instead, a feel-good hormone that downregulates the effects of adrenaline. Taking a mindful pause and then bringing kindness to ourselves seems to activate our innate caregiving system and the calming effect of oxytocin, allowing the mind to clear and giving us a chance to take rational steps to resolve the issue.

Even though self-compassion is not the default option for most of us when things go wrong, anyone can learn to do it. Neff has developed an exercise you can use in everyday life when you need self-compassion the most—the Self-Compassion Break (see the section “Self-Compassion Break”)—which is based on the three components of self-compassion described above. (This is just one exercise we offer as part of our empirically supported Mindful Self-Compassion training program.)

Consider the following example of the Self-Compassion Break in action: Your boss gave you a stretch assignment to lead a large and critical project. The project was a great success, due in large part to your skillful leadership, and you believe you demonstrated that you’re ready for a promotion. But when you raise the idea with your boss, she laughs dismissively and changes the subject. Livid with anger, you retreat from the conversation, asking yourself why you bothered to work so hard in the first place, since you would never be recognized for it. Of course your boss wasn’t going to support you, or even notice—she just wanted someone to do the heavy lifting to promote her own selfish agenda. Or maybe you’re hopelessly out of touch and your performance really wasn’t as good as you thought it was? When we’re in the grip of strong emotions, our minds run wild.

As a savvy businessperson, you might think that this would be the perfect moment to advocate for yourself if it were only possible to make a balanced, compelling case for your promotion. But without a moment of self-compassion, your emotional reactivity is likely to stand in your way—you’d put your anger on display instead of showing off your leadership skills, or you’d let self-doubt eat at your resolve to see the discussion through to an acceptable conclusion.

How do you activate self-compassion in the heat of the moment? Begin by acknowledging how you feel; for example, recognizing that you might still feel angry (“She’s terrible, and I hate her”), see yourself as the victim (“She made me go through all of that—for what?!”), or doubt yourself (“Maybe she’s right—maybe I don’t deserve a promotion—I didn’t do that great a job after all”).

Next, acknowledge that others would probably have similar feelings in this situation: requesting a promotion after you’ve expanded your skills and taken on more responsibility is a reasonable thing to do, and your emotional reaction to the rejection of that request is not out of line. Consider any examples you know of others in similar situations—perhaps Rob in the finance department told you last year that his promotion was also denied and you noticed how angry he was and how he doubted his own worth. You are not alone.

Finally, express kindness to yourself: What would you say to a friend in your shoes? Perhaps you’d say, “It’s rough being taken for granted.” “Whatever comes of it, that project was a huge success—look at the numbers.” Also think about how you care for yourself already. Do you go for a run, pet your dog, call a friend? If you do that when you’re suffering, that’s self-compassion.

Once you’ve shifted your frame of mind from a threat state to self-compassion, you’re likely find yourself calmer and in a place that you can sit down and write a thoughtful and persuasive proposal about your promotion—one that builds on your project success and exhibits your leadership potential under stress.

Lastly, a warning: Many people dismiss self-compassion because they think it flies in the face of their ambition or hard self-driving attitude—qualities that they feel have made them successful. But being self-compassionate doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t be ambitious or push yourself to succeed. Rather it’s about how you motivate yourself. Instead of using a whip—motivating yourself with blame and harsh self-criticism—self-compassion motivates like a good coach, with encouragement, kindness, and support. It’s a simple reversal of the Golden Rule—learning to treat ourselves as we naturally treat others in need—with kindness, warmth, and respect.

Christopher Germer is a clinical psychologist and part-time lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is a co-developer of the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program, author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, co-editor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy, and a founding faculty member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion, Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School.