The final step to self-empathy: Self-compassion

So how have you been doing with learning self-empathy?  If you haven’t taken the time to start putting these skills into action yet, you still can.  You have the ability to learn at any time, and you can start with baby steps.  If you’re not sure, go back to our first blog in this series and just start.  Messy action is better than no action. And if you feel you’ve been working on it and just don’t have the knack yet, that’s ok.  Remember, it’s a practice, which means it’s something we revisit every day and just keep working to get better, and better, and better.  Remember the ‘critical, not caring’ piece from step 1?  This is where you have the chance to use it.

So we’ve moved from self-observation to self-reflection and finally into self-awareness.  This final step is where we put all of this into action, and that’s self-compassion.  For those of you that follow me, you know that empathy itself is passive.  You don’t do anything, you don’t say anything, you just try to gain perspective into understanding.  You also know that compassion is the action to empathy.  (If you’re not sure, take a look at my TedX talk where I go deeper into the difference between empathy and compassion). If empathy leads to compassion, then self-empathy leads to self-compassion, and that’s the fourth step.

Let’s look at our example from last week where you blew your cool at Bill because he’s that guy who has to have the last word in everything.  You decided after some self-reflection that maybe Bill wasn’t the real problem, but rather that it was because you feel unheard, which just makes Bill seem even louder.  And, after taking a close look at your world and how you affect it, you realized that screaming at Bill only made other people run from you. You were able to take your power back from Bill and see that you can create the world around you rather than letting Bill create it for you.  But now that you have all of this in your head and heart, you have to turn it into action, and that’s where self-compassion comes in.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you pat yourself on the back and just say “I’ll never do this again”, although that could be part of it.  Maybe you have to apologize to your coworkers, and maybe even Bill, so you can feel like you’ve done what you need to.  Maybe you need to advocate for yourself so you feel heard.  Maybe it’s even a matter of finding a workplace that will appreciate you for what you do have to say.  It’s different every time, but once you put action on all of the work you’ve done to understand your own perspective in the world, you’ll be unstoppable, both as a human and as a leader.

Charity starts at home, and if you want to make empathy your super power, you have to start with yourself.  You can’t give what you haven’t got. Take the time, work the steps, and see how your perspective changes, both for others, and yourself.