In life, how you treat others is almost a true reflection of how you treat yourself. For example, if you find it difficult to forgive yourself over an error of the past or a wrong step that you took, then it will be almost impossible to also forgive others. The kindness that you are to show to others should obviously begin with you showing it to yourself. Of course, love begins inwards before it can be expressed outwardly. More so, having self-compassion and showing kindness to yourself is one of the pathways to achieving the goal of humanity.
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You will agree with me that the world is already becoming heavily competitive and as such, it is demanding a high level of perfection. So in order to achieve this and more, you have to start to build up yourself for personal growth. However, all these will be possible only when you have developed a personal positive relationship with yourself, which is a fundamental part of self-compassion. Trust me, if you do not take care of yourself, then do not expect someone else that is also busy with taking care of themself to take care of you.
Self-compassion begins with removing negativities from you and positioning yourself in a positive path. That is, removing anything that affects you (your emotions, attitude, nature, etc) in a negative way. At a point, you may even need to part ways with some people for the sake of your sanity. If you discover that a particular company has more negative impact on you that it has positively, then you do not have any business being with that company. For your own good, you should rather stay with people and form association with friends that will help you to grow, and will have positive influence on you.
There are some fundamental components and aspects of self-compassion that we need to consider. The first one is self-kindness. This talks about how you have related and relating with yourself in gentility, and in-depth understanding of yourself. You do not have to beat yourself over what you do not have control of. You have to learn how to love yourself and accept yourself the way you are. You may not be the best in the standard of others, but you are the better version of yourself. You should also know the difference between criticizing yourself and outright hatred for oneself.
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The truth is that there are things that you cannot help nor have control of; you have to learn to accept those things. For example; someone that is short, may not have much control over it, especially when they have gone passed the age of growth. The only thing they will do is to accept themself the way they are: this is self-compassion. You do not need the standard or validity of others before you accept or love yourself as you are. While it is possible to change what you can, you should also come to terms with what you cannot change, so that it will not weaken you.
Another component of self-compassion is mindfulness. This simply means paying in-depth attention to your real self. In this way, you will tend to discover yourself and who you really are. You have to look inwards to discover yourself and to know your purpose. If you know who you are, you will not allow anyone to tell you who you are not, or make you feel like you are nobody. Trust me, you are somebody and the moment you realise who you are, then you are already on the pathway to the fulfillment of your purpose.
In order for mindfulness to to be complete achieved, you have you to learn to mind your business. If someone does not invite you into their business, then do not invite yourself because nothing concerns you. When you are occupied with building yourself and making yourself better, you will not have time to bother yourself about what does not concern you.
One thing to understand about self-compassion is that it does not mean okaying your errors or being blind to your mistakes, but it means acknowledging them and then making conscious efforts to correct them and get better. More so, you cannot improve by making excuses for your mistakes but by learning from them. So self-compassion does not call for being ignorant of your flaws, but it calls for you to focus more on building a way around them and then getting better with time.
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