An important element to growing Self-awareness - along with nurturing acceptance of Self judgments - is to learn how to be kind to you. This means fostering a welcoming, friendly, generous attitude, both towards the Self and others. It’s also essential to learning greater awareness of the present, because kindness calls for more attention to any given moment.
Practicing kindness is, ultimately, a move towards unconditional love, the quality of accepting the Self, others, and everything in life without attaching to judgments about any of it, allowing everything to be as it is without trying to change it, and making every effort to ignore distractions to being present in all your moments.
Practicing kindness can help your Self awareness become more accurate and consistent. As you make kindness your focus, you’ll discover an innate quality to it; kindness doesn’t have to be forced or overly thought about in order to manifest. You do have to cultivate the ability, however, which - along with placing daily emphasis on it - means learning to recognize and move beyond obstacles that block its expression.
All obstacles are the result of ego trying to keep you in misery. For instance, instead of being kind toward someone who’s upset us - and looking inward for the cause of our upset – ego would have us retaliate in some way. Ego might try to make the other person feel as badly as we do by projecting our pain on to them through some outburst of emotion, as if their at fault for causing it in the first place. This also dupes us into believing we’re not responsible for causing our own pain; there’s always an external cause, some scapegoat we can blame for triggering the pain we’re feeling.
This ‘eye for an eye’ defense mechanism can thwart us from seeing the truth behind our actions, or behind those of someone else. For example, we might get upset when we catch someone lying to us, and try to make them bear the responsibility for it. When they instead turn things around and get defensive in response, do we look inward to see where we’ve lied to them (or whomever) on some past occasion; or do we get more upset, and create a rift in our relations with that person? If we’re carrying guilt about our own past fabrications, then perhaps that’s one reason we’re upset. The real cause of our angst is never the result of anyone else’s actions; it’s always about our own. Practicing kindness toward yourself will help you realize when you’re faced with your own self-judgments, and in return make it easier to be kind to others when they inadvertently remind you of them.
You can practice kindness in all your actions. It shines through you when you do something thoughtful for someone else, whether you’ve been asked to or not. This holds true when you’re kind to you, too. Kindness is freely given, without thought of reward. You’ve likely done many random acts of kindness, but there is more to it than just your external actions, or thoughts about being kind. It has a quality that can enrich your life beyond its apparent simplicity.
One way kindness can be nurtured is through meditation, which creates a positive state of well-being, keeps you grounded within the self, and enables you to feel a stronger connection with life. The depth of kindness you feel is directly related to the power of that connection, and your sense of Self. It’s an essential feeling of warmth and friendliness that we offer ourselves, and those around us.
Kindness supports the presence and growth of compassion, too. Compassion can be understood as the opening of one’s heart in love and tenderness to the presence of pain in someone else. Hand in hand with that heart opening is empathy for the other person. Sometimes there’s also a strong urge to help alleviate painful circumstances, to do something to aid another’s distress, not to mention relieve any we may be feeling because of theirs.
While people may be moved by pain, they often have little or no compassion for the pain and sorrow they feel for themselves. They may view their own pain as vulnerability, or consider their own sorrow a sign of weakness. Anxious or fearful people who judge their anxiety as a defect or failure – who may be caught in a cycle of self-victimization - are especially likely to deny themselves compassion or kindness, as well as judge others for what they believe are similar weaknesses.
Negative self-talk and critical attitudes that tend to grow around feelings like anxiety, fear, or panic, can be the worst stressors present in us. To break the toxic cycle of meanness and criticism means developing the capacity to feel compassion for your own pain and suffering, without making yourself a victim of fate or circumstances, or judging yourself for recognizing your pain, no matter what it may be. Pain is pain, regardless of how it manifests, and it needs to be addressed accordingly. Minimizing it by comparing your pain with anyone else’s deflects from acknowledging your truth; if you’re in pain, accept that it’s as real as anyone’s, and allow it to rise and pass away. This is the only way to deal with it effectively, and permanently.
Meanness is really a practice, too. Usually we practice it a lot, generally toward ourselves. We need to recognize just how mean we can be at ‘us’. It’s a habit of thinking and feeling that surfaces often, and is felt deeply in the body. It impacts our outlooks, our health, our self-awareness, and just as importantly our self-acceptance.
When you find yourself saying things like “I’m a jerk” or “I’m such a loser” or “I’m so stupid”, this is practicing meanness towards the self, and it reinforces wrong beliefs about who you are. Until you actually bring attention to how these statements affect the body, you won’t even know the harm you’re doing, because it often feels like you’ve always been that way. Much of the time, you probably don’t even notice how your body or mind react to mean thoughts. You can reach a point where you do it so often that you identify completely with all your own self-judgments. You are, as you likely already know, your own worst critic.
You'll also add a little drama to your self-recrimination efforts by projecting your self-directed meanness toward others. Every time you criticize someone else as a jerk, stupid, or what-have-you, you’re externalizing your meanness; others become symbols of how you feel toward yourself. This creates more self-judgment, more angst to deal with, and raises stress levels in the body. It also creates guilt around any accompanying thoughts and actions, adding yet more stress. It’s no mystery where stress comes from, or why it’s so detrimental to our overall health and well-being. The only mystery is why we don’t do more to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
By practicing loving kindness with steady commitment, you can address these kinds of challenges. You’ll begin to see the habits of meanness toward others or yourself when they happen. You can be free of their hold on you, so that their effect on other aspects of your life experience will begin to diminish. The effects on the physical body will be reduced, too, and peace of mind can follow. You can reduce stress by being proactive with your thinking, and by working on growing your self-awareness.
By establishing a conscious connection with the signs of meanness when they happen in the present moment, you can work at altering that energy into kindness. Recognize these moments as part of your growth experience; as things you’re going through, not as things that define you as an individual. That’s crucial to being able to let them go, and change your beliefs about who you are. The same recognition applies to any negative emotion, like fear, anxiety, or guilt. Can you learn to befriend these feelings, and hold them in awareness without identifying who you are with them?
When you can stay connected in this manner with the present moment, real caring for yourself and others can arise. Kindness can shine from within, and compassion can awaken. You can teach yourself to stay present with pain and difficulty, as well as with your positive feelings. Remembering to cherish yourself in a storm of negative emotions is a powerful way to deal with the pain of them, to view them as experience only, and not as who you really are.
Kindness and compassion directed toward yourself and your experience of life can help you stay connected to the present. Working with meditation to help you focus on directing kindness to your own pain - and towards difficulties with others - can help you explore the full depths of what kindness can do for you.
Instead of being in a relationship of denial or dismissal with your painful moments, you can have one of loving kindness, recognizing that your pain is an experience of life like any other. You can stay connected to the present by not identifying with pain, but by allowing it to happen. This helps you to let it go, and also helps you understand the nature of your feelings. With practice you’ll access a profound healing dimension within your being, and find more peace and joy in life.
One Self Inspired offers a free, downloadable audio meditation that can be used as a daily kindness practice. To access it, send an e-mail expressing your interest to
One Self Inspired
