The Importance of Self-Compassion

How do you feel about yourself? Are you as compassionate toward yourself as you are toward others? We need to understand and practice self-compassion. Dr. Kristin Neff is a leading scholar and researcher. She offers an online test to determine how self-compassionate we are. Honestly answering the 26 questions can give a good indication of your self-compassion. 
 
Several years ago I blogged about self-compassion and Dr. Neff’s work. From her website: “Self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings” and has three elements:

• Being kind to ourselves: Be “warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.” 
• Accepting our common humanity: Recognize that “suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience – something that we all go through rather than being something that happens to ‘me’ alone.”  
• Being mindful: Observe one’s “thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them,” being non-judgmental.

In the May/June 2017 issue of Explore. Dr. Roberto Benzo and colleagues reported a questionnaire study of 400 healthcare workers examining the relationships among self-compassion and a variety of other measures, such as happiness, mindfulness, stress, and exercise. They found:

• self-compassion was highly related to happiness (r = .63)
• “self-compassion was associated with decreased feelings of isolation”
• accepting our humanity and being mindful were “the most predictive of happiness”
• Self-compassion had a far greater impact on happiness than exercise.

My take-aways:
 
1. The study by Benzo and associates was at one hospital. It would be interesting to compare employees at different organizations using the same measures, that is self-compassion, happiness, and such, but add measures for engagement and job satisfaction My guess is organizations with employees who score higher on self-compassion would also be score higher on engagement and job satisfaction.
 
2. This study and others underscore the value of self-compassion and mindfulness training in corporate settings. While such training may seem “touchy-feely,” the potential to affect engagement and the bottom-line may be significant.
 
3. I recommend spending some time at Dr. Neff’s self-compassion website. Watch videos and listen to the exercises. Take time to take care of you.
 
Benzo, R. P., Kirsch, J. L., & Nelson, C. (2017). Compassion, mindfulness, and the happiness of healthcare workers. Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, 13(3), 201-206.
 
Neff, K. (2017) Self-compassion. http://self-compassion.org
 
Image, “Be Strong.”  © John Ballard, 2019

Modified from my blog of July 31, 2017. 
 
© John Ballard, PhD,  2019. All rights reserved.
 
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. ​

---