Self-Compassion is a Practice—Not an Achievement
And similar to any practice:
• Seeing progress can take time.
We live in a culture of immediacy and often expect ‘results’ far sooner than they come. Don’t give up too soon! As long as you’re looking for it—that’s important; you do need to look for it—you’ll begin to see signs of progress with time. This might look like actively noticing the kinder, more understanding voice in your head, responding to you and observing what it sees, or it might look like recognizing an absence—realizing it’s been awhile since you heard that mean, self-critical voice. You will likely find that the harsh voice wants to hang on, because fighting internalized messaging is hard work! But with time, the voice seems to have less power over you; it’s weaker, softer, and countering it comes more naturally. (In my own experience, eventually I could often laugh at the voice—like, ‘Excuse me? Who do you think you are, coming in here with that type of language?! Get out of here with that!’—but your experience may vary.)
• The more we practice self-compassion, the more effortless it becomes.
I don’t want to say it becomes easy, because I don’t think self-compassion comes easily to many people—especially those who have internalized messages of low self-worth, however those messages were passed along and whoever they came from. But with practice, it does happen *more* easily.
• We need to *keep* practicing as long as we want our skills to stay sharp.
You wouldn’t expect to become a skilled musician, and then never need to practice again, right?! That’s not how it works. The good news is, while musicians may spend hours a day actively practicing, we can practice self-compassion while we are doing pretty much anything we already do. We’re always thinking, right, so we have hundreds of opportunities a day to practice speaking to ourselves in a kinder voice, or talking back to that harsh, judgmental voice when it attacks us. You can even practice self-compassion WHILE practicing self-compassion! (I know, mind-blowing, isn’t it?! 🤯)
Other good news—practicing self-compassion will change your life. It’s so, so worth the effort and the time. It’s okay if it’s really hard for you right now—keep going. You can do hard things. And if you need some support—you know where to find me.