Self-compassion is becoming a key aspect of mindfulness in the West. It is also, in my opinion, one of the greatest gifts you could give yourself. What is it? It involves: deliberately treating yourself, with your mixture of faults and […]
That line, I don’t have to believe everything I think, jumped out at me from Elisha Goldstein’s 2010 post on PsychCentral’s Mindfulness & Psychotherapy blog, and it still holds true. Goldstein writes about a correspondent who, in the past, used […]
The practice of mindfulness tends to increase our level of compassion. But we still fall into the trap of being compassionate towards others while being unfairly harsh on ourselves. We can greatly improve our experience of life through the practice […]
At start of a new year, it’s very tempting to focus on what we need to improve about ourselves. Indeed, this can even be helpful if not carried to extremes – sometimes enough of our resolutions get carried through to […]
Do you get something wrong every day? That’s “bombu” nature. This Buddhist concept means we never get things completely right: instead we often make a mess of things because we’re human. Bombu nature means we need to accept we […]
Will your future self be a success or failure, healthy or sick, happy or sad? We spend a lot of our time thinking, worrying and speculating about the future but I find that one way to cut through that preoccupation […]
Here’s an exercise in self-compassion especially for those who feel guilty about doing nice things for themselves. In my youth in Ireland we were told that good Irish Catholics should engage in ‘self-mortification’ which is giving yourself a tough time […]
What, if it happened in the future, would transform your life? What, if it had happened in the past, would have transformed your life? Psychology tells us there’s a good chance that neither of these events would change your feelings […]
When I began to write and think about self-compassion in 2015, the concept generated less interest than it does today. Self-compassion as a practice was becoming part of the mindfulness movement but outside that arena not much was heard about […]
Imagine a new romantic interest invites you to his home for dinner. You get all dressed up and over you go. Maybe you buy something for dessert to show your appreciation. When you arrive he pulls out a chair and […]
