Compassion for myself

This is actually about compassion. If you’re thinking about compassion, you’re probably trying to find more of it, especially for people you don’t currently think more compassionately about right now. One such person might be yourself. Maybe. Just a thought.

Have you ever thought you weren’t good enough? Dumb question, right? Everyone–literally everyone–thinks they’re not good enough at least some of the time. That we’re not good enough is believable–there’s evidence for it all over, in the form of people who are “better” than us in some way, or ways we wish we were, but aren’t. So try telling yourself “I am good enough,” and see what happens. Go on, try it.

It’s like telling an angry person to calm down. You might as well yell at the rain to stop.

“Life is about progress, not perfection,” is a believable alternative–it’s obvious once you hear it. It also gives you room to say “…and I am making progress,” or even just “…and I am honestly trying.” I bet, I just bet, if you look at yourself, if you take some time to write down examples, you’ll find more evidence for your honest effort and success in making progress, than you will find evidence for your inadequacy.

This post sat as a draft for a year before I finally published it because I meant to make a list of personal examples of thoughts I’d changed, and I never made that list. Well, if I haven’t made the list in a year, I’m probably never going to do it. This post is never going to be as good as I’d originally planned it to be, but it’s better than no post, so here goes, I’m posting it.

(I love being meta about stuff.)

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