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Self Kindness makes you more Resilient

My experience in teaching Mindfulness is that people often need the self support that self kindness gives. Research now supports this.

Mindfulness asks us to be open and accepting of whatever is there, even pain, discomfort and difficulty but often we resist opening to the suppressed pain because we are afraid to feel it. When we learn to respond to ourselves with self compassion – this gives us the support we need and makes us more courageous.


We respond to ourselves kindly and warmly whenever we are in difficulty or facing challenge rather than becoming critical and condemning and undermining ourselves further…

Self Kindness Builds Resilience – we learn how to support ourselves

Anyone who has ever been taken care of when they were sick knows how gentleness, kindness, warmth can change a difficult experience to one that is bearable.

Self Kindness works in a similar way. We learn to support ourselves in times or stress and pain and learn that we can be OK even when we are uncomfortable. This courageous attitude develop our confidence in our ability to hold ourselves in a loving embrace no matter how life challenges us.

Self Kindness Builds Resilience

The Opposite of Self Indulgence – Self Kindness Builds Resilience

Initially, people often think that self kindness is selfish, wimpy or self indulgent, like self pity but in fact kindness & compassion are strong, powerful and very connecting.

Developing these skills is a real adventure in self discovery and self transformation. People find out that we share a ‘common humanity’ and many of the things they believed ‘separated’ or ‘alienated and isolated’ them from other people, now, in fact connects them.

Self Kindness Opens Your Heart And Not Just To Yourself

“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.”

 – Mark Nepo, Awakening Rights

So, if you want to develop self kindness so you can handle difficult moments in your life with less stress, pain and anxiety, why not consider doing a Mindful Self Compassion Course? Or check out the Online Mindfulness & Compassion Course just launched.

This blog was written by Joanne O’Malley, Mindfulness at Work.