To have compassion toward others, you need to have compassion toward yourself.
If you are not kind to yourself, how can you be kind to others?
Self-compassion is about turning love inside and show understanding, acceptance toward oneself.
You might feel compassion toward others but have difficulty to show this same acceptance toward your own self.
In the privacy of your own self, there might be battles you are fighting.
You might not be able to forgive yourself to not fit the ideal image you have of yourself.
If you don’t know what forgiveness is at a personal level, you cannot forgive others completely either. There will always be some resentment and residue that will tell you: Why should I forgive the world when I am so demanding with myself?
Kristin Neff, a researcher, has divided self-compassion into three elements:
- Self-kindness, or stopping harsh self-criticism.
- Recognizing one's own humanity, or our weaknesses and imperfections.
- Mindfulness, or putting experiences in their right place without exaggerating or ignoring them.
Compassion is not self-esteem because self-esteem is the ability to ignore one’s flaws.
A person who has high self-esteem might accept failures willingly without a fuss and accept it as part of life.
However, having a high self-esteem might focus on the feeling of being entitled and being special. High self-esteem is linked to anger and aggression. You think you deserve something just because you are special. You puff yourself up and put others down. Being average or number two is an insult.
Self-esteem is linked to pride, not to working hard and rightly deserve what we get.
Working on oneself.
Working at being a better person is linked to self-compassion because you’re doing the work.
It’s an introspection.
You do not forgive yourself because you deserve it from the get go.
You forgive yourself because you recognize you are imperfect and you make mistakes.
You recognize yourself as part of the humanity.
Because as Muslims we often feel like a poster for our entire community, it is hard to forgive ourselves when we are not up to par with the challenge.
Imagine you had to talk for the world while meeting an alien race.
Is anyone good enough?
Is anyone representative enough?
Is anyone capable of doing this?
Probably not.
People look at us and make assumption about our entire community.
We feel like we have to show Muslims under the best light possible because the Media reflect such a poor image of what we are.
We often feel like we cannot be ourselves.
We feel on the spot.
We feel like we have to walk on eggs all the time.
We are self-aware all the time.
It’s tiring.
It’s destructive.
It’s unfair.
It smothers our own voice as individual.
It removes who we are and depersonalizes us.
And worse, it puts tension on the stability of our family.
It puts tension in our own community.
It is not leading to forgive other Muslims when they make mistakes.
On the contrary.
It is not leading to more compassion toward on our people.
It leads to more disappointment and ill-feelings.
We expect others in our own community to be good enough to represent everything we are.
I believe that self-compassion will lead to more understand and compassion inside the Muslim community.
If you have high standards for yourself and cannot forgive yourself because you are not as perfect as you would like to be, how can you love others? How can you forgive other Muslims? How can you be kind to your own people?
Often Muslims are kinder, more compassionate toward outsiders
That’s because they don’t feel as judged.
They don’t feel the pressure.
They feel freer to make mistakes.
They can forgive themselves more easily.
I think the answer is to show more compassion and express words of compassion.
Excuse others
Express your encouragements when they do good
Do not make others feel like they could do better because they are already doing the best they can
Look at others as people
Not as a religion
Be yourself
Admit that you are not perfect and no one is
Do not expect anyone to be perfect
Put experiences in their right places
Be self-compassionate
That does not mean you should excuse yourself when you act poorly
You still have to face consequences of your acts
It just means be more human
Source:
Therapeutic benefits of self-conpassion.
Videos by Kristin Neff, the self-compassion"evangelist".
http://self-compassion.org/