Lifestyle

Insider Tips from the Pocket Mentor: Develop Self Compassion

By  | 

Vince Reardon, author of The Pocket Mentor: Insider Tips from America’s Most Successful People, is back this week to share more great advice. In addition to motivational tips in Monday’s feature of the Motivational Minute, Vince shares advice on being yourself through self compassion in this week’s Insider Tips.

Last week we learned that after interviewing 101 influential people for his book, the overwhelming majority of advice given centered around being yourself. This week we delve deeper into how to embrace being yourself to live a better life.

When Vince interviewed psychologist Kristin Neff, her advice went beyond being yourself; she talked about how to become your best self. Kristin’s specialty is self compassion. Self compassion is understanding and supporting yourself, no matter what happens.

It is extremely important that we understand that all people, including ourselves, are flawed beings. We need to accept that to be our best self. It is absolutely essential that we extend kindness and understanding to ourselves, not just others. In fact, if we can’t extend kindness and understanding to ourselves, we cannot be kind and compassionate to others.

We live in a society where high self esteem is valued. Striving for high self esteem is untenable because when you pursue self esteem you’re always judging and evaluating yourself. Vince says, “you’re always on an emotional roller coaster of up and down and we are often witheringly critical of ourselves. We don’t extend self compassion, we extend criticism.”

In talking with Kristin Neff, Vince learned that this roller coaster of self-judging is wrong. If we are to be ourselves we need to extend the hand of kindness and compassion ourselves just as mush as others.

 


Stay tuned to Insider Tips from the Pocket Mentor each week to hear more about varying topics from the variety of people in Vince’s book, The Pocket Mentor: Insider Tips from America’s Most Successful People.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *