Self Compassion Not Self Harm

Come on give yourself a break. 

Hi, I’m Gordon The Happiness Guy and I’m going to explain why giving yourself a hard time is more harmful and holding you back far more than you think.  This isn’t just my opinion, it’s actually scientifically proven!  

If you are too hard on yourself you will continually come to a disempowered standstill. This stops you getting where you need or want to be.

Setback are part of life, but how you deal with them is fundamentally important to you having a great life. Watch the video to find out why (and how) you need to re-frame your thinking to keep making progress.
If you prefer to read instead, I’ve transcribed what I say further down the page.

If you have any questions drop me a line here. 

My name is Gordon McCrorie, I’m The Happiness Guy and I want to tell you why self compassion is such an integral part of getting into the shape of  feeling the way that you want to feel. As well at the blog you are reading you can find out about pain and frustration and what causes it here.

Why Self Compassion Is Important

Whether that is weight loss or exercise or something else, let me run through why self compassion is so important. The scientific evidence is really strong on this too.

So self compassion, cutting yourself a little bit of slack. Why is that so important. So lets imagine you haven’t done something in work and your boss comes to you and they really berate you and they give you a hard time. How do you feel? How did you feel at the point and when you go home what were you likely to do. Did you think “that’s it, I’m going to go to the gym”, for a few people that is true. But for most, especially if they haven’t formed the habit, then they will just back away and feel bad.

Behaviour on Auto Pilot

When we feel bad we move into a different part of our brain. A part of our brain that is not interested in the future, it’s just interested in how we feel right now. And we’ll do a behaviour on auto pilot that makes ourselves feel better. 

We see it over and over with diets. You do one thing wrong, you beat yourself up, then end up saying “what’s the point I may as well just do whatever today and start again tomorrow.” That approach doesn’t really help anything, you know that! And the same if you have missed your exercise class, then again beating yourself up doesn’t help you feel any better. 

Make Winning a Bit Easier

You need to cut yourself a little bit of slack. Show yourself a bit of compassion. Identify, that example eg, what stopped you from getting to the gym. Maybe make winning a little bit easier, if your day is too busy and you can’t get to the gym then get yourself our for a five or a ten minute walk. Make it so small that it is easy. Show yourself compassion when you are not winning because the reality is you are going to be beating yourself up, feeling pretty awful and it isn’t going to be working out for you. 

Don’t Be Your Own Enemy

Self compassion – the it comes to weight loss, behaviour change, getting to the gym, when it comes to feeing good .. you can’t be beating yourself up! You cannot be an enemy to yourself, you can find videos about that on my You Tube Channel. Hopefully that makes sense and have a great day!