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Practise self-compassion

One thing that has helped me enormously in this regard, is to start focusing on others not as perfect human beings, but people just as imperfect as me.

Having empathy for and understanding of others helps us to do the same for ourselves. Strengthening our capacity for one strengthens our ability for the other. It is also easier to have compassion for others rather than ourselves.

And here is where the holiday season can actually help. We will see lots of drunk others, or behaviour from people we love that we find objectionable. It will exercise our compassion to its limit and in so doing give us a great self-compassion workout!

Start now.

As you move around your day, tune your attention to people that you see on your commute, people you work with, family members. Even people on television (it does not work so well with radio, I tried!).

As you pass them, instead of letting yourself say things like “there is a man in his jogging bottoms walking a dog”, change the pronouns and substitute yourself. “There I go, look at me walking my dog and wearing my jogging bottoms”. This may feel a little bit strange at first, but switching your perceptions of others to be about yourself allows you to view others and yourself more kindly:

  • “There I am, 80 years old, needing a cane to walk, I must be tired.”
  • “Look at me out having fun with friends. I won’t remember this tomorrow, and I will feel awful.”

Try it with people you like or dislike, people you are indifferent to, people who are like you and the polar opposites. Over time you will see a shift in how irritated you are by others to feelings that are more familiar. You have bad days, down days, and difficult days. When you play around with the barriers between ‘me’ and ‘not me’ you begin to see we are all the same. Our troubles may be different. But we all have to cope. No one is perfect. We can identify with everyone in some way, however different.