Self-Compassion and Inner-Strength Building

By Dr. Marina Heifetz, C.Psych

“When your day is long
And the night, the night is yours alone
When you're sure you've had enough
Of this life, well hang on

Don't let yourself go
'Cause everybody cries
Everybody hurts sometimes”

This great R.E.M. song “Everybody Hurts” reminds us that life can be full of pain and hurt. We all experience a range of ups and downs in this messy life; excitement, love, joy, frustrations, disappointments, worries, loneliness, sadness. Question is, how do we treat ourselves when we experience this pain? Would we treat our friends the same way?

Self-compassion practice has been scientifically shown to boost our mood and reduce negative emotions. Perhaps not surprisingly, research also shows that this practice helps increase empathy, social connection, and motivation.

In her book Fierce Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff explores how self-compassion increases our motivation as it guides us in responding mindfully to our mistakes or failures. This concept has also begun to be used in sport psychology with athletes, given that mistakes can be costly. Being able to pick ourselves back up after losing a game (which is generally unavoidable) builds resilience. Research is increasingly showing that those athletes that practice self-compassion tend to have more constructive reactions to failure. For instance, a study at the University of Saskatchewan found that after making performance errors, athletes who practiced self-compassion were less likely to catastrophize or take things personally, and they were more likely to maintain equanimity (i.e., "Everybody has a bad day now and then”). These athletes also report feeling more vitality while playing and tend to be more motivated to grow and develop as professionals, including taking responsibility and working on improving their skills.

Loving kindness practice is one example of a self-compassion practice that is focused on developing feelings of goodwill and kindness toward ourselves and others. The way we can practice loving kindness is to visualize wishes of goodwill for ourselves as well as expand these wishes to others in our lives, such as those that we love, those that we enjoy spending time with, those that we know as an acquaintance, as well as those we may dislike. These wishes can include “May they be happy;” “May they be healthy;” and “May they stay safe.” Though of course we can add or alter these wishes. We may place a hand over our heart as we do this to soften this practice and provide ourselves with the space and opportunity to reflect and make these wishes of goodwill.

With self-compassion practice, such as the loving kindness, we are exercising the muscles of our inner strength, which is paramount to building our resilience and increasing our motivation for sports and beyond. Self-compassion is a mindset. As Kristin Neff puts it, “Me against the world becomes me as part of the world.”