How to learn to be kind to yourself? That’s a question many of us go about every day asking ourselves, hoping someone will come around and tell us the correct answer. How do you, indeed, learn how to act a little softer and gentler towards yourself than you’ve always been?
I think no matter how kind we are to ourselves, we all should just learn to be kinder and kinder still.
Our bodies and minds need as much love and nurturing as we can provide them with, and what better way to do that than to be kinder and warmer to yourself?
This post features 10 beautiful and healing self-care tips that so many people in the world need to listen to right now! This world needs to be a better place, and what nicer way to do that than to help each other out in going and growing through life simultaneously?
The first step in any process of healing or treatment is figuring out where we are going wrong. Since learning to be kind to ourselves is also a kind of long, satisfying, and beautiful healing process, we will also begin this post by finding out if we are alright, and if we’re not, then where does our problem lie.
How to learn to be kind to yourself (+ 10 beautiful self-care tips). Let’s begin!
Table of Contents
●Are You Kind to Yourself?
#1 Do you call yourself out frequently?
I think this doesn’t need to be said.
We all, at one point or another, call ourselves out on things we’re doing wrong, and even things we might be doing right and haven’t realized yet.
We, humans, depreciate ourselves.
When we are young and lively but low in experience, we are treasured by our parents. When they grow old and lonely, very high in experience, we don’t value them so much. At least, some of us don’t.
This might just be similar to the process of depreciating a machinery or a piece of furniture, calculating its depreciation value from the percentage, the number of years it’s expected to be good, and its scrap value.
(I felt the need to say that because I’ve been studying accountancy lately).
An article from verywellmind.com debates between self-depreciation being a harmless habit or an unhealthy behavior.
Needless to say, it is an unhealthy behaviour because it leads directly to self-sabotage and we wouldn’t want to go there now.
Ask yourself: do you call yourself out more than you call others out? Do you point out your mistakes deliberately and then chide yourself like you are a child, mindless of the consequences it would present later on?
Do you too, like an enemy would, look at your negative points and highlight them more? Do you, yourself think that you need to be kind to yourself just a little more?
#2 Do you speak negative about yourself?
Even if it’s in a joking manner in front of others, even if you don’t mean it, even if what you say isn’t that true at all, do you do that?
Do you speak like you’re the bad guy, or you’re stupid or don’t understand anything, just to get your defense mechanisms up?
It isn’t a surprise that people think that if they speak bad about themselves, then they’ll be saved from others speaking bad about them.
It’s the mentality, and it’s really common. In fact, I’ve done this way many times before. To escape the pessimism coming from someone else’s mouth, I decided to be the pessimist myself.
I don’t think that in times of positivity. I don’t just randomly decide to praise myself and speak good and nice. It’s only negative.
Either we speak a lot of good things about ourselves or we speak a hell lot of bad things.
There’s also a neutral ground. Those people are lucky.
#3 Do you punish yourself?
We don’t need to ask this, you don’t need to answer.
We all already are aware of the fact that many people, unfortunately, many of them, inflict self-harm on themselves because a) they don’t think they deserve good things. And b) they don’t think they deserve the bad things.
Either way, we suffer.
We hide these facts, so no one knows. We smile, so no one knows.
We laugh and cry at normal times so people think we’re normal. Good news is, we are. Bad news is, we could be better.
If you are someone who indulges in any of these habits, or maybe something that isn’t mentioned here but should be, (then I apologize) and I ask you to kindly read on.
If you aren’t kind to yourself, there are huge chances that you’re living in the darkness and should be brought into the world of the brightness, where you’re the one you’re most in love with.
● When You Are at Your Lowest
#1 Allow Your Flaws
When you are feeling your absolute lowest, when you think you couldn’t fall any further, when you think you’re absolutely, truly broken, allow yourself to sit down in a room and inspect your flaws one by one.
Get acquainted with them.
Befriend your negative points.
Look at your faults, no matter how many of them there are and how much time it will take; give them time. Feel them. Understand what they want, because they do want something. That’s why there’re here in the first palce.
Understanding the problem half solves it.
The reason why so many of us spend all our time getting beaten to failure by our scars is that we are wary of accepting them. We are wary of even looking in their direction because we are afraid of what we will find there. We are scared of listening to our minds because though we’ve never listened to them before, we are sure it would end up conflicting us further if we ever did.
It doesn’t.
But if we dare to give it a shot, and try to understand what these scars are, we will come to a common ground. And maybe in the way we’ll end up actually learning how to be kind to ourselves.
Ask yourself: how did these scars arise? What do they make me feel, if anything? Am I alone with them or are there loved ones too to help me?
What do these scars want?
They want you to heal them.
Ideally, that’s what you should do.
#2 Allow Yourself to Suck
When I first started writing stories, I sucked, like everyone else.
At that time I thought it was great, but as I grew up and saw what it truly was, and I compared my past writing abilities to my current writing abilities, I was kind of shocked by the dissimilarities.
Chances are, if you suck the first time you do something, you don’t think too much about it because you are new and you are inexperienced and you still need to gain a lot of knowledge about it.
But, suppose this is your 500th try or something, or maybe your 1000th try, and you realise with a surprise that you still suck. This is demotivating.
I understand, when we aren’t feeling too great and we are still being a stubborn person and not giving up (congrats for that) then we realise that what we create is just plain…crap.
When our mind is elsewhere, and our hands are trembling, and we desperately need to find some sort of comfort and the only thing we do at that time is to still keep doing that thing, we might suck. We might suck big time.
And there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, when things get overwhelming, and you can’t keep your emotions in a check because the whole world feels like it’s crumbling down, do allow yourself to do bad art. Life is an art. And steal like an artist.
So, in his great book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, by Austin Kleon, he gives an amazing advice:
When nothing’s fun anymore, try to make the worst thing you can. The ugliest drawing. The crummiest poem. The most obnoxious song. Making intentionally bad art is a ton of fun.
Austin Kleon
#3 Allow Yourself To Be Imperfect
You don’t need to be perfect.
If you’ve read my other blog post, How to Forgive Yourself for Not Being Perfect? you’ll realise that things actually are never perfect.
No human being is perfect.
It’s an illusion or a mirage, we don’t know. But whatever you do, however hard you try, you won’t get to the point of perfection. Whatever you do, someone might end up doing it better. Someone will bring a new way to do it. Someone will surpass you. The boundary of perfection is never decided. It’s unlimited. Infinite.
Though the boundaries of being the absolute best is decided. If you can’t be perfect, be the best. If you can’t be the best, be good enough. If you can’t be good enough, and you instead just plain-suck, don’t be hard on yourself.
If you don’t achieve, don’t fret, don’t be too hard on yourself because in those times of conflict when you don’t achieve the goal you had set, your bodies and minds are already stressed and worried. And you don’t need to put all the blame of failure on them. You just have to learn to be kind to yourself.
So, allow yourself to enjoy the process.
Allow yourself to be crazy wild, and imperfect, and a sucker at what you do, and extremely bad.
Sometimes all the good things end up coming out of the bad situations.
Most of all, though, when you are imperfect, allow yourself to be kind.
● How to be Kind to Yourself?
So, we’ve at last gotten to the main content to this post. How to actually learn to be kind to yourself? How to implement these 10 refreshing and healing self-care tips that I’m going to present to you now?
If you’ve read this long, chances are that you really are not kind to yourself. Otherwise you wouldn’t have resonated with the situations given above and you would’ve stopped reading, but let’s keep that aside for more pressing matters to discuss over.
Chances are, you’ve felt this some time or the other, that you are being unjust to yourself, that you need to be calmer and more peaceful, that you need to accept yourself like you would accept the scars and flawed backstories of your loved ones.
So, don’t think too much about it now, read on. My 10 ways that will tell you how to be a little more kinder to yourself than you were…yesterday.
#1 ONE LIFE
You’ve got one precious and wild life, what would you do with it?
What indeed will you do with it?
Let it go to waste because someone who didn’t love you hurt you? Or are you going to make it better again, because you are the one who wouldn’t hurt yourself, you are the one who’d love yourself?
Trust me when I say this, becoming happy again is the biggest comeback. Do it for yourself. Do it for people who love you.
Do it for your scars that were sure of themselves that you would never be better. Do it for everyone who ever believed in you. And whenever doubts arise, whenever you think that there’s nothing positive coming out of this, whenever you start to feel like the un-luckiest person alive on the planet, understand that one life is all you’ve got.
Remember that life is short. And we’re here for a limited time, a miniature of a second.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again.
-Homer, The Iliad
Our lives are a blink of a firefly in the night. You’re just barely here. You have to make the most of every minute, which doesn’t mean you chase some stupid desire for your entire life. What it means is every second you have on this planet is very precious, and it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re happy and interpreting everything in the best possible way.
-From the book ‘The Almanack of Naval Ravikant’, by Eric Jorgenson
We have a small stay on Hotel Earth. Try to live your stay as you like. Try to make it the most worthful experience you’ve ever had.
This is your life.
Value yourself.
#2 PRACTICE SELF-CARE TIPS AND FORMS OF SELF-LOVE
This is the most common, and widely-known one.
I know it seems obvious that to heal, you must practice self-care tips, but it’s important, and if done alright, it also works wonders.
Exercise and meditate.
Do things for yourself. Even if for a day, or a specific time every day, do things that you like, so that you can tell yourself that this is your own life and you are the one who matters the most. Relax. Unplug. Live in the moment.
Don’t think anything. No regrets of the past, no worries of the future.
Practice the art of mindfulness. For God’s sake, if you need to do it, then sit in the lotus position and chant ohhhhmmm. Do yoga. If you want to sweat, go for a run. If you are tired, rest. Sleep. Stay hydrated. And most important of all, eat a healthy diet that your mum would be proud of.
#3 STOP NEEDING VALIDATION
A major problem with so many of us people is that we frequently need others’ validation to believe that we are on the right path and are doing the right thing.
Learn to trust yourself. Learn to trust you own gut instincts, and listen to them when they tell you something.
When you stop feeling the need to ask for someone’s approval, you get acquainted with the fact that in your own life, it’s your approval that matters the most.
If you feel the need to do something, and think it is best for you, do it. Don’t ask for advice unless it is some well-wisher whom you trust.
#4 GROW. CELEBRATE YOUR GROWTH.
If you’ve grown over the years, made yourself better, loved yourself better, and molded your soul into something yet more beautiful and pure, then congratulations because you’ve achieved something really great, something that many people cannot.
You need to go out and celebrate right now.
It means you’ve gone through a transformational phase that’s very hard and painful and you’ll never be the same again. So just celebrate the birth of your new self.
Celebrate your huge achievements and even small wins. We are here to laugh, to cry, and to remember every single moment.
#5 FEEL YOUR EMOTIONS.
What do your emotions tell you?
We often run away from ourselves. One major milestone in learning to be kinder to ourselves is to feel our emotions deeply.
If we stop taking these emotions and feelings as burden, and start treating them with care, who knows when they might become our greatest strengths. Even if those emotions hurt us, know that it is only temporary.
This brings us to our next point.
#6 IF YOU FEEL THE NEED TO CRY, CRY.
Don’t think you’re too weak if you’re crying.
That would be you just acting plain cruel with yourself.
If something bothers you, speak up. If something hurts you, face it, even if facing it means shedding a few tears. Some people are afraid of crying in public, rightfully so. Other people wouldn’t really understand it all the time if we tried to tell them what we feel.
We are alone in a crowd. A crowd doesn’t understand each other. They just yell and hit and act impulsively.
Or maybe it’s just that you’re in the wrong crowd.
But if you ever feel the need to cry, and don’t want anyone to see you, then cry alone. Or, highly recommended is that you let it out in the presence of some trusted loved one.
But don’t bottle up, because bottling up never works. Self-love is the greatest form of love.
#7 YOU CAN’T BE RAINBOW-SUNSHINE HAPPY ALL THE TIME
Accept the bad days. There will be some along the way. Okay, many along the way.
The road to sunshine is paved with storms and rain. But keep your eyes on the silver lining of every cloud. Know that hard times will pass. Life will be better.
But if you spend some time sulking, or if a day passes badly and you just want it to be over before it actually is, don’t feel guilty for wishing so.
Some days are bad. That’s just how it is. There are some days when you can’t do anything to save the day. Good thing is, it’s okay.
We all face our bad days and we’re allowed to sulk. As long as we don’t remain sulking all the time.
#8 IT’S NECESSARY TO HEAL.
Let your mind, body and heart heal from the scars of any pain you’ve felt.
Forgive them. Forget them. It’s selfless, I know. But selfless things are often the most good for you.
That person will always bear the scars of inflicting that injustice on someone else. You, on the other other hand, will heal and move on. Which option sounds better to you?
Forgiveness lightens the heart. Calms the soul. Brings rest to the mind. Holding grudges will harm you in the long run.
Make a promise, commit to yourself that you’ll take time out of your daily routine to sit with your past fears and scars and you’ll resolve them. You’ll talk about the unspoken challenges and regrets. If it can’t heal, if it’s permanent, maybe like the agony of a beloved dying, maybe some age-old pain, then it’s satisfying to accept that you won’t be able to recover completely. In those cases, moving on is the best option.
If, by chance, you yourself have been the one who has inflicted harm on you, then dare to forgive yourself too.
#9 FACE YOUR DARKNESS
Face your flaws. They’re a part of you, cherish them as much as you cherish the other, beautiful, prettier parts of you.
If someone comes close enough, then do let them see you. Do let them see you vulnerable. Don’t hide away. The good and bad things make you you.
That’s just what you are. Accept who you are and be fricking proud of it.
#10 IT’S YOUR LIFE.
It’s your own life. If other people’s opinions started mattering, it wouldn’t be yours anymore.
That’s why you have to make sure that you don’t let the negative opinions get to you, accept constructive criticism, and learn what you want from it.
Don’t take others’ crap.
CONCLUSION
These were the 10 beautiful, kind self-care tips, that will probably teach you a little about how to be kind to yourself and become the master of self-love. You’ve got one life, so love yourself and care for yourself as much as you can. Stop needing validation and stop taking crap.
Feel everything deeply so that you can write about it. Accept the flaws. Along the way, you’ll be constantly growing. You’ll outgrow people and places and habits. One day you might outgrow your old self. Celebrate that day.
You can’t be happy and smiling all the time. So if you feel the need to cry, cry. Sunshine all the time creates droughts. Face your darkness because it’s there inside; the light will outshine it one day.
Heal.
We are here to laugh and cry and live in joy. We humans are not here to hurt ourselves and call ourselves out on our silly mistakes. We are here to become our positive critics, to construct our best selves, to build more positive spheres around ourselves.
If someday you get up from bed one morning and suddenly want to change the world, maybe you’ve gotten to the right place after all. Become a part of my own journey of discovering My Formula for Changing the World.
