Self Compassion, love and forgiveness

The ongoing pandemic has given rise to massive shifts in the lifestyle of humans. With so many uncertainties in the way, life has been very challenging for individuals all around the world, and this time it has affected the various classes of individuals. While nature does not discriminate between people, it has been observed that somehow some have been impacted more than others. This capacity to endure and stand against such odds is not shared by many individuals. It is of utmost importance that we prioritize ourselves and our needs. It is important that we accept ourselves and be kind to our needs and interests. Self-compassion has been recognized as an important parameter towards building one’s resources and therefore, it can play a key role in helping us through the mental health concerns arising during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We often tend to delve into self-criticism by drawing into our failures that can either cause self-hatred or make a person depressed. Self-compassion helps us to carve out such phases in our lives. It is important to prioritize and focus on self-care. We can form a self-compassion exercise as part of our lifestyle. This can be a simple activity like taking a long shower or remaining in our bed. The focus is on giving ourselves pleasure and clearing out our minds of negative thoughts. The idea is to turn kind attention to one’s setbacks and acknowledge how difficult it is to have to endure this in one’s life. The various steps of self-compassion involve the following:

1) Review one’s progress. In trying to reach our end goal we often fixate on the end to a point that any progress in the direction is completely ignored. Not having scaled the mountain makes us so upset that we fail to notice the steady growth that we have made till then.

2) Acknowledge that things were not always perfect. Our growing years have been a balance of all the things we had and all the things we did not. No matter what the background, everyone has had lost out on one thing or the other. This lack of a proper foundation needs to be addressed and kindness needs to be shown to all the attempts we make to overcome such adversities.

3) Accept that failure is more common than we know it. The current life often glorifies the positives and throws little light onto the struggles of the people. Thus, all the information that we witness outside is of people doing well for themselves and thus we fail to be kind to our own missteps in the journey.

4) Understand that sometimes our fate can strike us down. No matter how hard you try sometimes, we are tricked and at times we miss because of the other chance factors that may lead us to fail at our attempts.

5) It is not fair to judge ourselves only on the basis of our materialistic possessions. While degree and money may all seem to be quite enchanting, it is also the insides of a person that matters and therefore needs to be cared for.

6) This too shall pass. No matter how doomed we may feel we are, every little problem comes to an end, and sometimes all we need to do is wait it out with kindness. Zero down all the expectations till the passage of time.