by Kathy Mann, Author & Speaker

Have you ever been told that you are too hard on yourself? When you receive feedback do you scroll past all the good stuff and focus on the negative or ‘constructive’ feedback? This was my norm for most of my life, particularly early in my corporate career.

Around 40 years old, I suffered a serious burnout and part of my recovery was to investigate aspects linked to stress. I discovered the field of study known as self-compassion: treating yourself like a kind friend would do. I’ve noticed that many women say negative things about themselves quite freely, even to people they have just met. It’s much rarer to find someone speaking of their strengths with a sense of pride or speaking about themselves with compassion and forgiveness when they fail.

In addressing the underlying sources of stress and learning how to recover, I discovered that self-compassion has an interesting relationship with stress. I read about the work of Elaine Beaumont who measured stress levels and self-compassion in groups of people like nurses, midwives and psychologists. Her findings revealed that people who have low self-compassion, who are unkind to themselves, have higher stress levels than those who treat themselves with love and kindness.

I also learnt that self-compassion is a skill and something I could work on actively to address my stress. I worked through the written exercises and meditations on Kristin Neff’s website. I created kind affirmations for myself to say daily for a few months. I looked myself in the eyes in the mirror and said kind things. I noticed when I was calling myself names and I halted it immediately. I replaced negative statements with things like “everyone messes up sometimes” or “mistakes are allowed.”

I can’t say I’m anywhere near mastering self-compassion but there has been a shift. I am kinder to myself when I make a mistake or when I fail at something. I’m a lot more patient with myself when I’m learning something new and I cut myself some slack when I’m outside of my comfort zone, in the knowledge that it takes time to develop skills.

As a mother I’m also conscious of the fact that my children emulate my behaviour. They don’t do as we say, they do as we do. I’ve started repeating statements like the ones I say to myself out loud so that my children grow up with those words in their heads instead of calling themselves names like I used to. I’m trying to break the cycle and teach my daughters to love themselves genuinely and to see the beauty in themselves that I see.

There are a lot of great stress management tools out there and I’m all for them. Something like self-compassion is often overlooked and I think it’s a really important place to start. I recommend including the skill of self-compassion to any stress management efforts you make and in addition to the hard skills you’re building to run your business. It’s hard to shine when you’re constantly being attacked from within. If you can transform your inner critic into an inner cheerleader, it’s much easier to achieve those dreams.

Kathy Mann is an author and speaker with a special interest in stress management. She is passionate about guiding people towards their best lives possible in harnessing their strengths and innate talents. She offers a stress re-framing service, which shifts beliefs to be more constructive around stress. She does this by educating her clients about the variety of stress responses that exist and how we can benefit from them. Kathy's books Avoiding Burnout and Harnessing Stress are available at major retailers and online at Amazon. She is a wife and mother of two beautiful daughters and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.