Clients have often asked me: "What is compassion, and how do I feel it for myself?"

My definition of compassion is a feeling of kindness, caring, tenderness and gentleness. Most of us have often had the experience of compassion toward others, but what about toward yourself?

Choosing Between Kindness and Harshness Toward Yourself

What if, when you are aware of your wounded feelings - your anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame and so on - you choose to approach these feelings with kindness and gentleness? You can then move into the Six Steps of Inner Bonding to discover how you are abandoning yourself - what you are telling yourself and how you are treating yourself - that may be causing these painful feelings. In understanding and moving into truth, you will feel better.

Conversely, what if, when you are aware of your wounded feelings, you ignore them, judge them, blot them out with addictions, or make someone else responsible for them? When you do this, it is likely that you will end up feeling even worse, compounding the self-abandonment.

What if, when you are aware of your deeper feelings caused by life - your sorrow, heartache, heartbreak, grief, or helplessness over others and outcomes - instead of avoiding these feeling with various addictions and other forms of self-abandonment, you embrace them with caring, tenderness, gentleness, and kindness toward yourself? When you make this choice, you open the door to letting these feelings move through you rather than getting stuck. 

Out of Victimhood and Into Personal Power and Emotional Freedom

Moving into compassion for yourself - choosing to be kind, caring, tender, and gentle with yourself - is the key to being loving to yourself. It's the key to moving out of being a victim of your own addictions and of others’ choices, and into your personal power and emotional freedom.

When you make the conscious choice to be kind, caring, and gentle with yourself and others, your heart opens, and then compassion, which is a gift of spirit, comes into your heart. It is the choice to be kind and caring that opens your heart to the power of compassion.

Do you know what kindness is? Gentleness? Tenderness? Most people recognize these ways of being, and have the ability to be kind, gentle, and tender with others. What about also choosing to give these things to yourself? 

It’s About Wanting to be Loving to Yourself and with Others

If you wanted to be kind and gentle with yourself, would you judge yourself? No, because it is not loving. Would you ignore your feelings? No, because it is not kind. Would you attempt to blot out your feelings and fill your emptiness with food, alcohol, drugs, TV, spending, blame, anger, caretaking, or any other addiction? No, because none of these things are kind. Would you pull on others to be kind to you, rather than being kind to yourself and others? No, you wouldn't, because it is unloving to yourself to make others responsible for you.

On the other hand, when loving yourself, would you be unkind to others - blaming them, judging them, ignoring them, or rejecting them? No, because being kind to yourself inherently involves also being kind to others. It is never loving to ourselves to treat others badly, so when your guiding light is to be kind and loving to yourself, you will naturally be kind and loving to others, bringing compassion and understanding to all kinds of situations – even ones where being loving involves setting boundaries or saying no.

Why not decide today to make kindness - with yourself and others - your guiding light? Being a kind person will bring you far more joy than being a reactive person, i.e., allowing others to determine who you want to be. Try focusing on kindness each moment and see how you feel. You might discover your personal power and emotional freedom!

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."