How to Love Yourself More – Kristin Neff
SUMMARY
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Self-compassion is being in good friend to yourself and learning how to love yourself more. It’s being supportive, kind, encouraging and an inner ally rather than an inner enemy.Self-compassion means acknowledging that we are imperfect human beings doing the best we can and trying to be kind to ourselves in the process. Knowing how to love yourself more is so important.
Starting the process of integrating more self-compassion into our daily lives:
- The first step in being more self-compassion as part of your daily life is just noticing those moments of suffering and struggle, and trying to respond like a good friend to learn how to love yourself more.
- The most basic level of self-compassion is speaking to ourselves in a warm, supportive tone of voice using encouraging and constructive message as opposed to destructive criticism. Appreciate yourself to know how to love yourself more
- Using gentle and tender touch like putting your hand on your heart, or your arm, or your face is a very direct way to be supportive to yourself.
If we are cruel, cold, or unkind to ourselves, we can’t even really take in the love from others and we’re the only one who is there for us 24/7.
Creating a supportive and encouraging relationship with ourselves makes such a huge difference. This helps you understand how to love yourself more.
We’re comfortable and used to being unkind and mean person to ourselves and we aren’t used to be in a kind and supportive person to ourselves. Be kind in order to know how to love yourself more.
If we care about ourselves and we want to be happy, we aren’t going to be lazy and self-indulgent. We’re going to engage in healthy behaviors and if we do it with an encouraging, motivational, friendly, and constructive mind-set, we’re going to be actually much more able to achieve our goals by just learning how to love yourself more.
Process of starting to practice self-compassion
- Find a type of supportive touch, physical gesture of kindness that feels good for you. Ask yourself, “Is there a physical gesture that makes me feel comforted and supported?” This will change your body’s biochemistry and nervous system allowing you to feel safer and calmer. Little deeds of kindness help you learn how to love yourself more.
- Asks yourself, “What would I say to a dear friend I cared about who is going through the exact same situation I was?” Use a warm tone of voice.
Three doorways into self-compassion
- Kindness
- Common humanity
- Mindfulness
Research shows that people are better relationship partners when they’re more self-compassionate which teaches you how to love yourself more.
If you can be kind, friendly, supportive, gentle with yourself, then every single person you come in contact with will resonate with that and feel better as a result. Learn how to love yourself more and make feel others great as well.
Being self-compassionate is one of the biggest gifts we can give to others because we are much more able to have positive relationships as opposed to self-critical frame of mind.
One of the key features of self-compassion is it helps you feel safe and it counteracts our feelings of anxiety. Learn how to love yourself more and be self-compassionate.
We’re social animals. We need to feel we belong but it’s ironic because the way we try to belong and be loved by others is by excluding ourselves, by feeling ashamed, by being mean, and being hard on ourselves.
It’s not just what happens to you in your life that determines your well-being. It’s how you relate to yourself. Have positive attitude to learn how to love yourself more.
Being an inner ally is strongly linked to strength, coping, resilience, and basically, thriving.
Having a dialogue on self-compassion is important in order to learn how to love yourself more
- Be mindful that you’re suffering. You can say, “This is suffering,” or “This is hard for me.”
- Remember that suffering is a part of life.
- Be kind to yourself by having a gentle touch and saying words of kindness like, “I’m so sorry. This is so hard for you. I really care about you. I’m here for you. What do you need? Can I help you in anyway?”
TRANSCRIPTION: HOW TO LOVE YOURSELF MORE – KRISTIN NEFF
Learning How To Love Yourself More
Kamala Chambers
Do you ever feel just so overwhelmed and stressed out like you’re not accomplishing enough or maybe you have anxiety? When you don’t find any reason to how to love yourself more? Then, you start to get down on yourself. Why am I not accomplishing more? Why am I stressed out? Well today, we’re going talk about self-compassion and how to love yourself more.
Luis Congdon
To help us how to love yourself more, we’ve brought Dr. Kristin Neff. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She has a PhD. She studied neuroscience. She’s done a lot of work in the field of meditation, Buddhism, and mindfulness. She also has written a hit book on Amazon that has nearly 300 5-star reviews.
It’s really awesome to bring on Dr. Kristin Neff to talk to us about self-compassion and how to love yourself more.
All right. Welcome to Thriving Launch Kristin. Are you ready to launch?
Kristin Neff
I’m ready.
Luis Congdon
Awesome.
You’re here talking with Kamala and I and, we’ve heard a lot about self-compassion and self-love, but here’s the thing that always stumps me, what is self-compassion and how to love yourself more?
It’s something that it seems like everybody has a different idea or self-love and it’s starting to sound a little woo-woo to me or a little bit out there so I’d really love to just ask you. Can you bring that home for us and help us understand what self-compassion is and how to love yourself more?
Kristin Neff
Yes. I do prefer the term, “self-compassion” as opposed to, “self-love” although love is part of self-compassion. Really, learning how to love yourself more very simple. Self-compassion is being in good friend to yourself. It’s being supportive, kind, encouraging and an inner ally rather than an inner enemy.
Most of us are worst self-critics. We’re harsh, cruel, and cold with ourselves and it really doesn’t help at all.
Kamala Chambers
I’d love to hear from you what you recommend to start the process of integrating more self-compassion into our daily lives and to learn how to love yourself more.
Kristin Neff
Luckily, most people have some experience being kind and compassionate to others. We know what to say when a friend comes and says, “Oh my God. I’ve just had a horrible day,” or “This happened at work.” We know how to be supportive, how to give our attention to the person, and how to be caring toward them.
Self-Compassion and Knowing How To Love Yourself More
Kristin Neff
What self-compassion is just giving ourselves the same attention and believe it or not, we often don’t. We’re so lost in either struggling with the problem or criticizing yourself. You’re feeling ashamed or trying to fix things but we just don’t pause to say, “Hmmm. This is a difficult moment I’m going through right now. I actually need a little kindness and support for myself.”
This is really important in knowing how to love yourself more, the first step in being more self-compassion as part of your daily life is just noticing those moments of suffering and struggle, and trying to respond like a good friend to be able to how to love yourself more.
Luis Congdon
How to love yourself more? I talked to a lot of parents. When I talk to parents, I hear the way they talk to their children and they were very supportive and very loving. However, when I talk to them, I hear from them about how they talk to themselves.
One of the things that I’ll advice couples or parents when I’m talking to them and I hear that they’re being hard on themselves, I try to ask them, “How would you talk to a child if this was you? If this was a little kid version of you, how would you talk to them?” Is that what we’re talking about with self-compassion?
Kristin Neff
Exactly.
One of the ways you can give yourself compassions, soup up simple question to know how to love yourself more. When I say this to someone I cared about, a close friend or my child that I was compassionate toward but loved unconditionally and sadly, usually the answer is no. I would not treat my friends or the ones I love this way. It’s really just noticing when we’re being unkind to ourselves and trying to have a new conversation in our heads. The most basic level of self-compassion is speaking to ourselves in a warm, supportive tone of voice using encouraging and constructive message as opposed to destructive criticism.
There’s also other things you can do to evoke self-compassion and to realize how to love yourself more. For instance, you can use some sort of gentle supportive touch like putting your hand on your heart or your arm or your face. Often, just as a child response to physical touch. We are mammals and we have attachment systems and we are designed to respond to warmth and gentle touch. We can actually give that touch to ourselves, which is a very direct way that we can be supportive to ourselves. Even if our minds can’t lather, our bodies often feel soothed and comforted in. With just placing a gentle, tender hand on our own bodies is another access point.
How To Love Yourself More From Within
Kamala Chambers
This is very exciting to have you here, Dale. Welcome! Are you ready to launch?
Kristin Neff
Yes, that’s right. Often, even if we are lucky enough to have other people in our lives who meet our needs, we need to have self-compassion to know how to love yourself more. If we are cruel, cold, or unkind to ourselves, we can’t even really take in the love from others and we’re the only one who is there for us 24/7, so to speak.
Creating a supportive and encouraging relationship with ourselves makes such a huge difference and we can teach ourselves how to love yourself more. It’s really necessary I believe in order to be happy and the research supports it. It’s not just my belief. There’s a huge empirical literature now showing how important it is to be self-compassionate if we want to have psychological well-being.
Luis Congdon
I want to dive into that a little bit because I’m recalling when I first started doing this thing called “self-talk” and self-talk is really about the way you talk to yourself and having a compassionate conversation with yourself to know how to love yourself more. Maybe I messed up and I go, “Man! Luis, you’re such an idiot. You messed up.” Somehow, I’d start saying these things to myself.
When I started reading about self-talk and self-compassion, I understood that I could change that conversation and by changing that conversation, I could change the chemistry in my body. I could change my outlook on my life. I could create more success by changing that dialog that was happening. I wasn’t a victim to it. It was not this automatic thing that there is actually a part of me that has control over that dialog.
At first, I felt really weird Kristin. It was kind of odd. I would messed up and I’d go, “Oh, it’s okay Luis. You’re trying. I’m really proud of you for trying and yeah, sure. You’ve made a little mistake there but you know what? There’s always tomorrow and the thing is that you’ve learned something from it and I’m really excited and proud of you for trying.”
I can see myself saying that to a kid and feeling like, “Wow this is amazing” like, I’m helping coach this child but doing this with myself was awkward.
Kristin Neff
Yeah, it does feel funny at first but the interesting thing though is that the opposite habitual pattern doesn’t feel funny, does it? I mean, for whatever reason, I think there are reasons based on family of origin, and culture. We don’t feel uncomfortable saying “You loser. I’m ashamed of you. What a good for nothing. I can’t believe you said that.”
Treating ourselves like someone we don’t like very much. That comes very naturally. The whole thing is a self-to-self relationship which is essential in knowing how to love yourself more. It’s just that we’re comfortable and used to being unkind, mean person to ourselves and we aren’t used to be in a kind, supportive person to ourselves. It’s really just a matter of choosing how we respond. Choosing are we going to be that kind, compassionate parent? Are we going to be the parent like in the old days? Spare the rotten spoil the child.
Luis Congdon
I’m putting myself in the position of when I first got a hold of this information and how revolutionary it can be to have this information to teach how to love yourself more.
Kristin Neff
Yeah, it truly teaches how to love yourself more. It was for me too. I certainly didn’t invent the idea of self-compassion. I think I’ve helped study it and bring into the coming culture but I learned about it in a meditation class I was teaching. It was an amazing moment for me when I realized I had this resource that I just didn’t even know it was there and it made an immediate difference in my life and I think a lot of people feel the way.
Its like, “You’re kidding! I never thought of that before. I can be that warm, caring, supportive, kind, loving friend to myself 24/7 even at 3 in the morning.” And, this is actually possible and that’s why it seems to be transforming so many lives.
Kamala Chambers
So powerful and as a business owner, I know that I have been the worst boss to myself. In the past, I would just really get down on myself for not producing enough or not getting things done fast enough. This is something I have really struggled with is having self-compassion. I have to say I’m way more productive and I get so much more done and so much more fun when I have self-compassion and grace for where I’m at. This way you can teach yourself how to love yourself more.
What do you say to the people that are overly busy, they have too much to do, too much on their plate? How can this really help them?
Kristin Neff
Sadly, for whatever reason, people honestly believe that if they were kind and supportive to themselves, they will be unmotivated. They really think they need to be crack the whips, so to speak in order to get themselves to do anything that they will be lazy and self-indulgent if they’re kind to themselves.
We know with parenting for instance, a compassionate parent doesn’t let their child lays around, skips school, eat all the ice cream they want, or not achieve anything in their life. When you care about your child or when you care about your friend, you want the best for them. And so, you try to encourage and motivate them to reach their goals but out of love and care, not out of some feeling that they’re inadequate as they are.
The research is clearly the same for ourselves. If we care about ourselves and we don’t want to suffer, we want to be happy, then, we aren’t going to be lazy and self-indulgent. We’re going to work hard. We’re going to engage in healthy behaviors and if we do it with an encouraging, motivational, friendly, and constructive mind-set, we’re going to be actually much more able to achieve our goals.
Most people have a very hard time accepting that. I think it’s just the double they know. They haven’t really tried any of the way to know how to love yourself more.
Luis Congdon
Let’s take a deep dive for a moment and assume everybody in the audience now, we believe this can work but I don’t know how to do it. You’ve convince me that it works. You’ve told me there’s some science, and guys, you can look up the science by going into Kristin’s book on self-compassion.
Let’s just for a moment say we believe all of it and we’re ready to give it a shot. How do I start? What do I do? Can you lead me through some of that process?
How To Love Yourself More With Self Help
Kristin Neff
Yeah it’s so important to know how to love yourself more. I would say maybe the first easiest step is to see if you can find a type of supportive touch, a physical gesture of kindness that feels good for you. For many people, this is maybe placing both hands over their heart center. For some people, it’s just simply holding one hand in the other, giving your fingers a little squeeze. Other people like a self-hug and others might want to gently stroke their face. This is how to love yourself more with self help.
People are really different so taking the time to find, “Is there a physical gesture that makes me feel comforted and supported?” and that’s really a nice place to start because that will change your body’s biochemistry and change your nervous system activity allowing you to feel safer and calmer.
And then, you can follow that up just with asking a very simple question, “What would I say to a dear friend I cared about who is going through the exact same situation I was?” Usually, we know the answer to that. We know what we will say. We ask about the tone of that warm tone of voice we’ve used when we really want to convey someone that we care and we’re there for them. It’s really just a matter of trying to adapt that language in that warm, supportive tone with themselves.
It does feel a little awkward at first, definitely, but it’s temporary and you start developing that as a new habit, and before long, this becomes your default option of being kind to yourself as opposed to being harshly critical.
Kamala Chambers
I know this practice has been really powerful for me. Even taking a couple of deep breathes is something that has really been beneficial for that self-compassion because the brain, the body, all of it functions better with breath and oxygen moving through. That’s the simplest and the easiest way to just consciously in one breath practice self-compassion.
Kristin Neff
Another access point is if you want a fuller definition of what self-compassion is I define it not only as being a kind, supportive friend to yourself but there’s also two other elements that are really key.
- Recognition of common humanity. Remembering that obvious fact that the fact we often forget, which is that everyone is imperfect, everyone makes mistakes, everyone fails and often, when we do fail or make mistakes, we irrationally feel like, “I’m the only one who’s done this” or, “It’s just happening to me.”
When we remember that this actually is supposed to be happening, we are supposed to fail, make mistakes, this is what it means to be human. That can really soften the sense of self focus and isolation we often get and that can be a pathway in the self-compassion.
- Mindfulness. Instead of being lost in our difficult emotions, lost in our suffering, take a moment to step outside of ourselves, take a few breaths, and ask what’s happening right now, “Oh I see. What’s happening right now is I’m feeling grief” or “I’m feeling anger” or “I’m feeling fear” and that ability to know that we’re suffering when we’re suffering is actually a really important step for them being able to respond with kindness.
Luis Congdon
I’m thinking about some people and maybe even an element of myself that sometimes gets really wrapped up in making other people happy and how important it is that they’re happy and I’m thinking how me doing this practice. It’s going to probably make me calmer. It’s going to make me feel more loving towards myself. It’s going to make me a gentler person and that should have an impact on others. Yes?
Kristin Neff
Yes, absolutely it’s essential to know how to love yourself more. It’s so funny, many people are afraid that being self-compassionate means being selfish, not focusing on the needs of others.
First of all, research shows that people are better relationship partners when they’re more self-compassionate. If you are irritated, agitated, down on yourself, and negative, you cannot communicate that to everyone you meet and they’re going feel that. They’re going to resonate with you and pick up some of those negative emotions. But if you can be kind, friendly, supportive, gentle with yourself, then every single person you come and contact with will resonate with that and feel better as a result.
Kamala Chambers
I was just thinking about how rampant anxiety is in our culture and something about I really suffer from for a while due to some traumatic events, I ended up having these series of panic attacks that were very intense and self-compassion was the way out of that anxiety. It was the most important thing.
Luis Congdon
On that note too, just a big kudos to Kamala because all you thriving launchers, you listen to the show. You’ve been watching Kamala go through her process and it’s been really cool for me because today we are having a conversation. And, where Kamala and I differ is I’m full of ideas. I generate a lot of ideas. I’m very high energy person. I’m just so much fire and Kamala is a little bit cooler in her way of being and she’s more thoughtful and sees steps and processes while I just think of dreams like if I will say, “Let’s climb the mountain” and Kamala starts thinking about the training and the packing that takes to get there.
And today, we are having a conversation and I was like, “We’re going to climb Mt. Everest.” This is like, I’m sharing these dreams and we dialogued for a while and then Kamala, going into her center. She did this very naturally. She just said “I think I’m tapped out. My energy and my resources are now… I need to take some time to just refuel myself so let’s stop the dialog here.” I said, “I can think about how we’re going to pack and how we’re going to climb that mountain.”
And in fact, in the past, when Kamala would just kept going with me, she would get exhausted. I would get exhausted. Then, we’d both be upset with each other. Then, we wouldn’t believe the dream anymore and then we just spin out and be very mean to ourselves.
And today, Kamala had enough self-compassion and understanding to say “This is where I’m at. I’m tapped and now I need to go back.” It was just a really wonderful moment for me.
Kamala Chambers
Yeah. Thank you.
Kristin Neff
That’s beautiful.
Luis Congdon
I mean these are the kinds of impacts that self-compassion is going to have, yes Kristin?
Kristin Neff
Yes.
Also, about Kamala’s point about the anxiety, one of the biggest benefits of self-compassion is it actually taps into our safety and soothing system. It’s natural or us as human beings. We’re born into the world. When we are in the presence of warm, supportive, caring caregiver, we feel safe.
So actually, one of the things we are doing when we give ourselves compassion is we’re helping us feel safe. We’re letting that part of ourselves know “I’m here for. I got my own back. I’m not going to abandon you.” And that sense of safety is so powerful for counteracting the anxiety we normally feel.
You really felt one of the key features of self-compassion is it helps you feel safe.
Luis Congdon
That’s really wonderful.
Kamala Chambers
And that’s something that is really needed for people.
At some point in our growing up and our fundamental structure, we stop feeling safe. Whether it was someone was angry and we took it personally that it was about us or something small like that and so, that memory lives inside all of us, right?
Kristin Neff
That’s right. And we’re so afraid of being rejected for very good reasons. We’re social animals. We need to be loved. We need to feel we belong but it’s ironic because the way we try to belong and be loved by others is by excluding ourselves, by feeling ashamed, by being mean, and being hard on ourselves. It’s like we’re pulling the rag out from underneath ourselves.
If we want to be loved and want to belong, we need to start loving ourselves and we need to start telling ourselves “You belong. I’m here for you. I’m not going to abandon you.”
We really can’t expect it from others if we don’t give it to ourselves.
Luis Congdon
Kristin, the nerd side of me is starting to come and I’m curious if you could shoot off just a few studies or resources that people can go to. We know you have your book, Self-Compassion, but are there any studies or research that people can dive into or other bodies of work? If you can name off a few, that’d be awesome.
Kristin Neff
There’s like 900 PDFs of actual published research that is on my website, self-compassion.org. If you’re a research nerd, you can spend the next two weeks reading this on my website. There’s a huge body of literature.
The first one off that comes in my head, people often think that self-compassion is weak. Well, one study showed that soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and they found how self-compassionate soldiers were was more predictive of whether or not they develop PTSD symptoms 9 months later than the level of combat exposure they face. This basic finding is repeated in the number of different domains, with divorce, coping with AIDS, etcetera.
Kristin Neff
Are you an inner enemy or you’re an inner ally? Being an inner ally is strongly linked to strength, coping, resilience, and basically, thriving.
Luis Congdon
That’s fantastic. That’s great and it sounds like you have a lot of resources over there in your website.
The last piece I wanted to touch on is what is the self-compassion dialog when you’re talking to yourself? Because I know that’s an element. We’ve talked about putting your hand on your heart or your thumbs together, taking a breath, or putting your hand on your own knee, whatever it might be as far as touch.
What about the dialog? What is that look like and can you play that out a little bit for us so we can feel a tangible experience of it for a moment?
Kristin Neff
Yeah, okay.
We have something called, “The self-compassion break” which is a way of reminding ourselves of these 3 components of self-compassion for learning how to love yourself more.
If you’d take a moment and just think about something that you’re struggling with right now in your life, some situation that’s causing some difficulty. Maybe let’s give a moment for your listeners even to just think about one of the situations they’re dealing in their lives right now. And then, remember these elements of self-compassion.
The first one, the first phrase of what we called “The self-compassion break” is “This is a moment of suffering. This is hard.” We’re bringing a mindful awareness to that fact that this situation we’re dealing with. “This is difficult. This is hard for me.” We have to be aware that we’re suffering. That’s the first step to open our hearts in response.
The second phrase is remembering that suffering is a part of life. It’s not that that “This shouldn’t be happening,” or “Something has gone terribly wrong that it’s happening,” or “It’s just me this is happening to.” These situations, the struggle you’re going through, this is part of life. Many people are coping with similar situations, their own flavor, their own version of it but this really is part of the shared human experience.
So because of that, it’s really important that we be kind to ourselves. In addition to putting a hand on your heart or some of the soothing touch, I’m just taking a moment to say some words of kindness. Things you might say to a good friend like, “Gosh, I’m so sorry. This is so hard for you. I really care about you. I’m here for you. What do you need? Can I help you in anyway?”
Those words of kindness, encouragements, and support can be brought in to help us give ourselves what we need and they teach us how to love yourself more.
Those 3 basic elements; mindfulness, “This is hard. This is suffering,” remembering this is part of coming humanity, and then kindness in response to the difficulty.
That’s really all we need to navigate many of the difficult situations in our lives. It really makes a big difference.
Kamala Chambers
Thank you so much for sharing that and for being here with us all at Thriving Launch.
You’ve been listening to Kristin Neff. This has been so beautiful to listen to this dialog on self-compassion and how to love yourself more.
Thank you so much for being here. Keep practicing self-compassion.
Kristin Neff
Thank you both for having me.
