Self-compassion is not an excuse

Try this: recall the last time you got something badly wrong, and recall the exact words you said to yourself in your head. Then ask: if a friend had made that same mistake, would you have said those words to them?

Almost nobody says yes. The gap between the two answers is what this piece is about.

The most common fear

The reason people resist being kind to themselves is usually this: if I stop being hard on myself, I will let go. Harshness feels like the engine. Plenty of successful people are convinced the unpleasant voice in their head is what got them here.

What the research on self-compassion finds is the reverse: people who are kind to themselves after failure tend to try again sooner, take responsibility more directly, and avoid looking at their own mistakes less. The ones who punish themselves hardest are the ones who look away — because looking means taking another beating.

What it is not

• Not self-esteem. Self-esteem requires you to come out ahead of other people; self-compassion needs no comparison at all.
• Not excuse-making. An excuse says the fault was not yours. Self-compassion accepts the fault without attaching a verdict about your worth.
• Not softness. Most of the time the kindest sentence you can say to yourself is also the hardest one: I did get this wrong.

Three steps to try

Kristin Neff, who has studied this longest, proposes three short steps. One: name what is happening — this hurts right now. Two: remind yourself that this belongs to being human, that everyone has moments like it, that you are not uniquely defective. Three: ask what you need right now, and then do that.

What stops people getting up is rarely the fall. It is usually what they say to themselves afterwards.

Step two is the one most often skipped and the one that changes most. The sharpest pain in failure is usually not the failure itself but the belief that ordinary people do not go through this. That belief is nearly always false — nobody posts that part.

If three steps sound too theoretical, there is a shortcut: write down what you would say to a friend in exactly your situation, then read it back to yourself. It feels awkward the first time. It stops feeling awkward faster than you would expect.