How to Be Nice To Yourself When You Mess Up
For many of people, a mistake or failure can feel like the end of the world.
The default, kneejerk response might look like self-criticism or blame, beating yourself up mercilessly, or ruminating about what happened (thinking about it over and over again).
Whatever your go-to strategy is, I’m guessing it doesn’t feel very kind – or very helpful. In fact, you may have noticed that it usually just leaves you feeling worse, and doesn’t help you do better the next time.
Today I’m going to talk about the most helpful way to be nicer to yourself when you make a mistake. This is going to help you not only cope better when you mess up, but actually learn from your experiences. It’s called self-compassion and it really works.
What is Self-Compassion?
You might be wondering what is self-compassion and how does it compare to regular compassion? Here are the main points to keep in mind:
Compassion is having sympathetic concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others
Self-compassion is turning that compassion around on ourselves
Essentially it is being kind and understanding when we’re confronted with personal failings. It’s treating ourselves with kindness when we’re in pain or suffering as opposed to beating ourselves up.
And as you may have experienced yourself, there’s no learning in harsh criticism. When we criticize or beat ourselves up, we’re usually left feeling alone, dejected, and demotivated.
The 3 Components of Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is comprised of three important components. These are:
Mindfulness
Self-kindness
Common Humanity
Each of these components needs to be present in order to fully practice self-compassion. Let’s break down each one to see how they interact with each other.
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Component #1: Mindfulness vs. Overidentification
Mindfulness is the ability to be present with what's happening as it's happening without judgment. It’s the ability to see things as neither good or bad, just as they are.
Being mindful is the opposite of being on autopilot.
We need to have the courage to be present with our difficult emotions, instead of hiding our heads in the sand. Mindfulness gives us the ability to recognize when we’re having a moment of struggle.
We can’t ignore our pain and feel compassion at the same time, we need both. Mindfulness also requires that we not “over-identify” with negative thoughts and feelings, so that we get caught up and swept away by negative reactivity
Component #2: Self-Kindness vs. Self-judgment
This means treating yourself with kindness as opposed to harsh self-judgment when you notice you’re in a moment or struggle suffering. That suffering can look like failing, having painful experiences, or feeling unhappy or dissatisfied.
If your default is to beat yourself up, you’re naturally responding to your suffering with frustration or resistance, rather than acceptance or kindness. This frustration can easily lead to self-judgment or self-criticism.
Component #3: Common humanity vs. isolation
This component connects you to the idea that all people are imperfect and all people lead imperfect lives. This prevents you from the irrational sense of isolation: thoughts like, “No one understands me” or “I’m all alone”, which only compounds your pain.
Suffering and feelings of inadequacy are part of the shared human experience. There’s an interesting irony that in feeling alone in your suffering, you become deeply connected to a very common human experience.
This is what separates self-compassion from self-pity, or feeling sorry for yourself. The notion that your experience is simply human can be humbling and even comforting in some ways. It’s OK to acknowledge how hard it is! Self-pity is filled with resistance and anguish, while self-compassion is the recognition that what you’re experiencing is hard and common.
The benefits of self-compassion
There is a ton of great research that shows self-compassion increases your motivation and your confidence. And most importantly it helps you not give up, which is key to reaching your goals in life.
Research has shown that self-compassion makes a person more resilient, and more able to bounce back after messing up. It lowers self-criticism and builds up self-worth, helping you to be more ambitious and successful, rather than complacent and lazy
We’ve also seen that particularly in comparison to self-esteem, self-compassion is associated with:
Greater emotional resilience
More accurate self-concepts
More caring relationship behavior
Less narcissism and reactive anger
There’s also some research that it helps make you more compassionate towards others. There’s a warmth in feeling connected to others, in feeling like you’re not alone in your struggles.
When people increase their own well-being, they usually become more patient, cooperative, and caring in their relationships. In compassion for your own pain is a sense of common humanity: we all suffer, we all face disease and death, we all lose things that we love.
Treating others with compassion and acceptance can start with being able to treat yourself that way first,
Why it’s hard to be nice to yourself
You may have tried to be nice or practice self-compassion, but found it especially challenging when you’re angry at yourself.
While anger is an incredibly useful emotion, it goes a bit haywire when it’s directed at yourself. Anger is self-protective, which is great for outside threats. But internally, that anger might show up as criticism, blame, or self-doubt.
And because anger feels protective, it can be hard to let go of the urge to fight yourself. In fact, it can feel really satisfying. And for anyone with a trauma history, it might even feel unsafe to be kind because it’s not as self-protective.
Notice the next time you feel angry with yourself and do a quick check-in:
What kinds of thoughts show up?
What do you have an urge to do?
Is there a part of you that doesn’t want to stop being angry?
This will give you a good indication of what might get in the way of practicing self-compassion. This is useful because being mindful of these automatic thoughts and reactions allows you the opportunity to respond differently.
You can notice the urge to beat yourself up, recognize that it’s a part of you that's trying to help you do better, and also see that it’s not the most helpful way to do so. This gives you the opportunity to choose what to do, rather than being at the mercy of what shows up.
Related: How to Stop Worrying & Overthinking
How to practice self-compassion
Think of an area you consistently struggle with. This could be failing a test, making a mistake at work, or embarrassing yourself in a social situation.
What was your most recent experience of failing or messing up? Imagine what happened and remember how you handled it.
Next, imagine someone you care about experiencing the same exact scenario. They failed in some way and they feel terrible about it.
What would you say to them?
What kind of action would you take? (For instance, giving them a hug)
Compare the response to your friend to how you typically talk to yourself.
In what ways does it look different?
What kind of support or guidance do you offer?
For most of us, if we talked to others the way we talked to ourselves, we wouldn’t have any friends left. And yet for some reason, it still feels acceptable to be nasty and mean to ourselves.
Notice the stark difference between the way you help others and the way your mind tries to help you when you mess up. Which one feels more helpful? Remember that not everything your mind says is helpful!
A quick and simple self-compassion exercise:
A great way to put this into practice is to ask yourself every day: “How can I be a friend to myself today?” When you have a negative thought, practice asking yourself, “Is this helpful? What would I say to a friend?”
The goal of this isn’t to ignore or try to make negative thoughts go away. It’s simply to start observing and responding to your thoughts differently than you might on autopilot. If there’s any useful information in a negative thought, you can take it and use it, and if not, then just let it be.
New habits take time to stick, so make sure to create a daily, visual reminder to help you remember to ask yourself these questions. Use whatever methods have helped you in the past. Here are some suggestions:
Post-it note
Notecard
Whiteboard message
Calendar alert
And it’s especially important to allow yourself space to mess up. Don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up!
It can be really easy to fall back into the self-criticism trap. Use it as an opportunity to notice how it feels and gently correct. And keep in mind you’re not always going to want to be nice to yourself. As I mentioned earlier, anger and criticism is a self-protective response, even when it’s not helpful.
If you’re struggling to be nice, try saying something like this:
“Oh wow, look how easy it is to keep being nasty to myself. I feel really bad now, even though there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to stop. What would I say to my friend? I’d probably tell them…”
How self-compassion motivates you
Maybe you’re worried that once you start being nice to yourself, you’ll start being lazy or let yourself off the hook. A lot of people believe self-criticism and self-judgment is motivating and thankfully the very opposite is true.
As I mentioned above, there’s an overwhelming amount of research that shows self-compassion actually increases motivation, rather than decreases it.
One reason for this is that self-compassion makes it easier to take risks because you’ll know that on the other side, you’ll be able to show up for yourself in a kind and helpful way. This takes the pressure off of being perfect because you’re able to learn from your mistakes.
It’s possible to be nice to yourself and hold yourself accountable when you mess up. It’s just that accountability looks a little different. Here’s an example:
Self-critical accountability: “I can’t believe I failed that test. I’m such an idiot! I’ll never graduate at this rate. Now I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter to pass the next test.”
Self-compassionate accountability: “Wow, I wasn’t expecting to fail that test. I feel bad since I know I can do better. Maybe I need to start studying earlier or look into tutoring to ensure I pass the next one.”
Notice how the self-compassionate response to failing a test still holds yourself accountable, but it opens up space for helpful suggestions. The self-critical response only assigns blame and in the constricted view of what happened, can only see an unhelpful suggestion as a way out (pulling an all-nighter). And for others, it’ll likely lead to giving up entirely.
Self-criticism means blame while self-compassion means responsibility. Consider this the next time you’re criticizing yourself: is there a sense of accountability and problem solving in my thoughts or are they just playing the blame game?
Related: 5 Ways to Reduce Stress Today
I hope this has convinced you that self-compassion is a useful tool to start practicing every day. Self-criticism prevents you from learning from your mistakes. Being kind is the antidote to harsh self-criticism.
This all may sound easy in theory, but can be difficult in practice. Try setting an intention at the beginning of the day and then reflect on how things went at the end of the day.
The next time you mess up, try talking to yourself like you would a friend and see what happens. Does it feel better, even just a little bit? Does it leave space for helpful problem-solving?
It’s a process and it takes time. Be kind to yourself while you figure it out.
If you need help asserting yourself or creating boundaries, check out this post: The Ultimate Guide to Being More Assertive
