Soft-skills without the marketing flair – Episode 5: Self-compassion

Reading time: 7 minutes

We often talk about compassion for others, but never for ourselves. And when we hear about self-compassion, it’s met with an outcry: “I’m going to be seen as selfish!” or “I don’t want to feel sorry for myself” or even worse “What’s this nonsense?Yet at Open Mind, we talk a lot to our customers about self-compassion, because we believe it’s essential to optimizing the way we are cognitively and emotionally. Unfortunately, self-compassion suffers from a bad reputation, a reputation that’s a bit “carefree”. So today, we’re going to try to give self-compassion its letters of nobility by shattering preconceived ideas.

Myth no. 1: Self-compassion means feeling sorry for yourself, which doesn’t help you move forward.

This is the position that most people have in life: when something goes wrong in our daily lives and hinders our well-being, we automatically go into “problem-solving” mode:

There’s a problem – I don’t want a problem – I’ve got to sort it out immediately.

Self-compassion suggests opting for the opposite behavior. If, instead of immediately trying to solve the problem, we first adopt a posture of self-compassion, we gain the emotional and psychological stability we need to solve the problem later on.

So what is self-compassion in concrete terms?

Self-compassion can be defined by its three components:

Benevolence and non-judgment:
Encouraging yourself, being patient and tolerant with yourself. In the same way that we check up on a friend to see how he or she is doing, self-compassion means checking up on ourselves and making sure that our thoughts about ourselves are never harsh thoughts we would never tell others.
Common humanity:
We all belong to the same humanity. Common humanity means daring to be vulnerable. It means accepting that what we go through is a human experience, that our suffering is similar to that of others. It means not thinking that others always do better than we do, so as not to isolate ourselves in our torment and suffering.
Mindfulness: You have to be able to listen to yourself enough to realize when things aren’t going well. It’s all a question of balance: we have to allow ourselves to be unwell, i.e. not to run away from our negative emotions, but we mustn’t identify with them too strongly or for too long either.

Here are a few questions to keep in mind to find out if you have a posture of self-compassion: Am I kind and understanding towards myself? Do I recognize flaws and failures as shared experiences? Do I put my negative feelings into perspective? How can I support myself?

Myth n°2 “I already have good self-esteem, self-compassion wouldn’t do me much good“.

Self-esteem and self-compassion are two distinct things that bring different benefits.

Self-esteem is the evaluation of one’s worth, a judgment by definition. Low self-esteem can have a major impact on well-being, while high self-esteem leads to narcissism. Self-esteem is built on success and destroyed by failure. It is also built by comparison with others, and is reinforced if we think we do better or are worth more than others. In self-compassion, there is no comparison with others. On the contrary, in the face of failure, self-compassion repairs the damage done. Serena Chen and Juliana Breines of the University of Rhode Island have conducted an experiment showing the difference in impact between self-esteem and self-compassion.

In this study, they asked participants to recall a time when they had done something they felt was wrong and felt guilt or remorse. The majority of participants’ transgressions involved romantic infidelity, academic misconduct, dishonesty, betrayal of trust or hurting someone they loved. They were then randomly assigned to one of three groups: a “self-compassion” group, a “self-esteem” group or a control group. Participants in the “self-compassion” group were asked to write a paragraph to themselves expressing their kindness and understanding of their transgression. Those in the “self-esteem” group were asked to write a paragraph describing their positive qualities. Participants in the control group were asked to write about a hobby they enjoyed. All participants then completed a questionnaire assessing their desire to make amends and their commitment not to repeat the transgression in the future. The researchers found that those who had been encouraged to treat themselves with compassion reported being more motivated to make amends and never repeat the transgression. Much more so than participants who had been encouraged to respond to the transgression in a way that reinforced self-esteem.

Self-compassion therefore makes it easier to embark on a personal development process. This introduces our third preconceived idea.

Myth n°3 “I have to be hard on myself to motivate myself”.

We regularly hear that if we’re too kind and flexible with ourselves, as well as with others, then this will lead to more lazy behavior. To prove this misconception wrong, I think the following study speaks for itself.

In this study, students first took a very difficult vocabulary test and received feedback indicating that they had performed poorly. The participants were then randomly divided into two groups. The experimenter remarked to the first group with the self-compassion condition:” If you’ve had trouble with the test you’ve just taken, you’re not alone. It’s common for students to have trouble with tests like this. If you feel bad about what you’ve done, try not to be too hard on yourself. ” . To the other group of participants, the experimenter instead said ” If you had trouble with the test you just took, try not to feel bad about yourself – you have to be smart if you got into this university.” .

Afterwards, all participants were informed that they would have to take another vocabulary test. But before taking the second test, they were given the opportunity to study a list of words and definitions for as long as they wished. The researchers found that participants who had been pushed to treat their initial failure with compassion were more likely to adopt a mindset of developing their vocabulary skills, and to devote more time to revision than their counterparts in a condition of self-esteem. It seems, then, that compassion paved the way for self-improvement by creating a desire to work harder.

Conclusion: without self-compassion, there’s no desire to do better – on the contrary! The risk of another failure is seen as draining, and there’s a higher risk of abandonment.

Myth #4: “Self-compassion has no place in the professional world”

Business is a daily routine where you have to seem to have an answer for everything, where missing a deadline makes you feel stressed, where you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself during a presentation, where a conflict with a colleague can arise…. In this context, practicing self-compassion allows us to:

Prevent stress. Self-compassion is strongly associated with emotional well-being, low levels of stress and anxiety, and the ability to cope with everyday challenges.
Gain in flexibility and learning capacity. Self-compassion also engenders resilience, i.e. the ability to bounce back from difficulties. It enables us to be agile and flexible.
A global vision of situations. Self-compassion, as discussed in preconceived notion #1, gives us the ability to identify problems without the hubbub of stress and negative emotions. We see things more clearly, and are better judges of the problems we face.

In short, there’s not a single negative side to self-compassion. In both the professional and personal worlds, it’s an asset for tackling everyday life with flexibility, adaptability, interpersonal skills and calm.

So, when can we all get started?

Author: Anaïs Roux