Welcome back to this week’s FAME coaching blog! So, last week I talked about a client of mine who is very self-critical of herself. She believes that she HAS TO be perfect and do everything perfect. Ironically, she knows that it is impossible, but yet and still she believes that she has to be perfect. She is going through this continuous cycle. As I wrote about on last week, this cycle consists of: Unmet unrealistic expectations which leads to self-criticism. Self-criticism which leads to depression. With depression, thoughts and attention becomes clouded, which will then lead to under performance, which again turns into unmet unrealistic expectations. The good news: this cycle can be broken! As I ended with last week’s blog, we can end this cycle by showing ourselves self-compassion. 

Self-compassion is the act of being kind and understanding with yourself even when you make mistakes. Self-compassion allows you to be able to be realistic and objective with yourself-flaws and all. How do we practice self-compassion? I think there is a few things that we can do to practice self-compassion. Below is a list of my top 3: 

1. Give yourself credit

Give yourself credit is a huge one for me. When I say give yourself credit, I mean give yourself praise for the things that you do good. If you are trying to lose weight and you eat a healthy meal, give yourself praise. When you get an “A” on a math test, give yourself praise. If you are trying to control your anger and you don’t go off on the cashier when your order at your favorite restaurant is wrong, give yourself praise. When you learn to give yourself praise, it ultimately boosts your self-confidence, even when you don’t do EVERYTHING right. 

2. Be understanding with yourself

What is being understanding? Understanding is being kind, even when things do not go how you expect it to go. Let’s be honest. EVERYTHING is not going to go 100% the way you want EVERY TIME. In life we have to learn how to be flexible or we will always set ourselves up to be upset. Learning how to be understanding, even when we “mess up” will allow us to be gracious and kind with ourselves. 

3. Check what you think and say to and about yourself

Your mindset has a lot to do with how you feel about the world, future, as well as yourself. If your mindset is positive, then I can guess that your mood will be somewhat positive. However, if your mindset is negative, negative, negative, then I can probably guess that your mood will not be in your favor. If you constantly belittle yourself by calling yourself names or don’t think that you are good enough, then this will affect future thoughts and mood. Be sure to watch what you are thinking and what you are saying to yourself. Be kind to yourself!

These are just a few things that I am getting my client, who thinks she should do everything perfectly, to work on every day. We get in the habit of showing others compassion, but we have the most difficulty showing ourselves compassion. If you do fall in this category, I encourage you to incorporate the above strategies to improve self-compassion.

What do you think? Would love to hear from you. Do you show your self-compassion with yourself? Or do you need to work on showing yourself compassion?

-with love, reese

www.famecoachingandconsulting.com