Kindness

“My religion is very simple, my religion is kindness” Dalai Lama”

When Vicky in our team first started her kindness and compassion journey a Buddhist monk asked her to think about the ways in which kindness can flow. She thought for a while and then told him ‘well it is something we give to others or perhaps something that others give to us’. He asked her if there was any other way that kindness could flow, and at that time she couldn’t think of anything. Then he finally said to her ‘we can be kind to ourselves’, and that was the start of her kindness and compassion journey.

Through her practice of kindness and compassion, it is this element that she has found most challenging and continually reminds herself “may I be kind to myself”.

When we look closely at how kind we are to ourselves, it can be really quite eye opening. One of her favourite authors Kristen Neff said that in order to demonstrate this we “should treat ourselves as we would treat our best friend” and this includes thought, word and deed.

So how can we be more kind to ourselves? Here are a couple of ideas from Pro-Development:

1 – Choose compassion over criticism

Have you ever listened to your inner critic? Vicky’s inner critic voice is loud and it often fails to recognise all the good in favour of the one small thing she didn’t do. Remind yourself that we are allowed to make mistakes and there maybe days when we don’t feel our best, compassion says that it is ok.

2 – Take care of your body

Our body is the most amazing power tool and is very intuitive, it tells us when it needs something whether that is food, hydration or even through illness. Yet often we ignore what our body is trying to tell us. Take some time to really tune into your body and listen to its signals, this can be done through meditation, certain kinds of exercise, or tuning into the bodies responses.:

We would love to hear your thoughts and reflections on Kindness and Self Kindness, let us know what works for you.