Editor’s Note: With these weekly newsletters, my goal is not to preach my perspective or impose my ideas. I simply wish to be a student of life and invite you to join me in the exploration, in case my journey resonates in any way to yours.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve gone deep into passion and values. This week, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a step back. To zoom out on the overall conversation.
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Do you and your best friends have a bi-weekly existential crisis too, or are you normal?
I’ve noticed that we have a remarkably unfortunate ability to turn beautiful conversations about big hopes and dreams into a dangerous sense of ‘why haven’t we done these things already?’
Run the next mile.
Get the next job.
Quit the next job.
Become the next Brene Brown.
...rarely allowing enough time for the idea of “next” to even take full form.
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Coming from an immigrant Indian family, I was raised to be almost entirely focused on the outcome. As I have more conversations about this idea with my peers, I recognize that it is not an uncommon upbringing. It was a noble pursuit reinforced by our family systems, education systems, and mainstream media. However, this places far too much emphasis on the outcome and not enough on the journey.
I hate the idea of finally getting to where I’m going, only to be left asking myself ‘where have I even been?’ and ‘why was I there?’ This makes authenticity — fluid authenticity — the principle that I aim to build with and the mindset I’m trying to cultivate in myself. To make life decisions that are directionally sound.
With that said, writing about the theories I have around authenticity is much easier than practicing this ideal day in and day out. In the moments that I inevitably prioritize the outcome over the journey, I feel that I’m moving away from my authenticity and can be really hard on myself.
This is where self-compassion enters the conversation.
When I used to think about self-compassion, my mind immediately jumped to affirmations and some woo-woo sh*t. However, it’s much deeper than this. I’m learning that self-compassion is a largely underrated tool for authenticity, and one you can actually develop.
According to author, researcher, and professor Dr. Kristin Neff, self-compassion has three components:
Self-kindness: being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism
Common humanity: recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience – something that we all go through rather than being something that happens to “me” alone.
Mindfulness: a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them.
What I love most about Dr. Neff’s definition around self-compassion is that it actually starts with others:
“Think about what the experience of compassion feels like. First, to have compassion for others you must notice that they are suffering. If you ignore that homeless person on the street, you can’t feel compassion for how difficult his or her experience is. Second, compassion involves feeling moved by others’ suffering so that your heart responds to their pain. When this occurs, you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way. Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly. Finally, when you feel compassion for another (rather than mere pity), it means that you realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the shared human experience.”
The word compassion literally means ‘to suffer with’.
When we recognize another person’s pain and stand there with them in that suffering, we ourselves grow. We expand the limitations of our me-focused thought process and expand our empathy. This practice, extended to ourselves, has tremendous power.
“Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself...Perhaps most importantly, having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness.” - Dr. Neff
In a society overly concerned with perfectionism, self-compassion is not a skill we are taught. It’s one of those fun ones we have to teach ourselves in the process of our self-excavation. For me, it’s all about auditing my own authenticity. Making sure that when I do veer off course, I’m not only able to identify this, but also that I’m not beating myself up over it.
Dr. Neff has a self-compassion test on her website. I took the test this week, and here are my scores:
The average overall self-compassion score is in the 3.0 range.
1.0 - 2.5 = low in self-compassion
2.5 - 3.5 = moderate self-compassion
3.5 - 5.0 = high in self-compassion
The goal should be to have lower scores in self-judgement, isolation, and over-identification and higher scores in self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
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Interested in learning more about your own levels of self-compassion? You can take the test here. I would love to hear about your results and your reactions to them. Were you surprised? Are you more or less self-compassionate than you thought? Did any part of this newsletter offer you a new lens on the ‘woo-woo sh*t’?
Best,
Shiv
P.S. For ways to increase your self-compassion, check out Dr. Neff’s suggestions.