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If you’ve been practicing compassion meditation with me these last two weeks, you’ll have noticed it includes sending wishes of goodwill toward yourself. Today, in Part 3 of our Compassion Series, I’ll discuss self-compassion in more depth and offer you a meditation specifically designed to foster it.

Recall that compassion meditation is also called metta, goodwill, and loving-kindness meditation. Traditionally, the self compassion component comes at the beginning of the metta meditation, but I’ve found that to be problematic. My experience is many people struggle with extending compassion toward themselves, making this a poor starting place. That’s why last week I had you begin by sending goodwill to a person or animal that you love. Once you’ve generated warm feelings, it’s usually easier to extend them to yourself.

But, why is self-compassion sometimes a struggle?

Writer Patricia Rockman suggests our tendency toward self-loathing has roots in the fact that we value self-sufficiency, autonomy, and personal accomplishments over interdepence and community. We come to believe that we must always be the best, always be accomplishing more, and we must do this all on our own. If we have to ask for help, we’re failures and we’re unworthy of self-respect. But, Rockman says:

The idea that we can do everything ourselves is and should be absurd. I mean, look around you. Do you have shelter and food? Did you build the former and grow the latter? Likely not, and even if you did where did you get the building materials, the seed, and tools? Our interdependence is always staring us in the face but we so easily miss it, focused on our self-importance, negative (“I’m so horrible”) or positive (“I’m so great”).

Source: https://www.mindful.org/self-compassion-new-mindfulness/

Is having compassion for yourself a sign of weakness? Only if you believe that you should be a perfect human being with no faults. And, that’s just not reasonable. You can’t be perfect, any more than other people can.

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Johnson Canyon, Banff National Park, Alberta

 

You deserve as much compassion as anyone else. Furthermore, self-compassion isn’t selfish, because it is almost impossible to extend compassion to others, particularly difficult people, if you can’t apply it to yourself. When you receive compassion, you feel supported and are better able to handle your own emotions. This is a necessary precursor to handling the negative emotions that arise when trying to generate compassion for others (for more on why compassion and negative feelings go together, see last week's episode).

To have compassion for yourself is to hold all of your attributes and characteristics with love and acceptance, even those that aren’t desirable. This doesn’t mean you no longer strive to get better, but improving is easier when you feel supported with loving-kindness. The support you get from yourself is just as valuable as that you get from others. In fact, you could argue it’s more valuable, because you can have it whenever you need it; you don’t need to rely on others.

Regular compassion meditation can help you strengthen self-compassion, and today,