Five ways to be kinder to yourself

If my experience is anything to go by, these modern times of electronic organisation and digital connectivity haven’t made life easier. In fact, life is decidedly more complex and much more nuanced. We maintain all manner of relationships all the time, most of which have entered the once sacrosanct spaces of our homes without us even questioning their value. In many cases this lifestyle leaves us drained and under constant bombardment. We need to learn to be kinder to ourselves.

Many have lamented the fact that school aged children never get to switch off. The problem of online bullying and hyper connectedness following vulnerable teenagers home is awful. Due to isolation, in many cases, this has become the norm for adults too. Zoom meetings in your pyjamas, emails all the time and no defined ‘work’ hours mean that you are either working, helping the kids with online schooling or thinking about work. The days of defined spaces are over. People know where you are all the time.

My own realisation

Due to facing my own difficult set of circumstances, I realised the importance of looking after myself in order to cope. What I didn’t realise at that time was just how important this notion is for all of us. Even without the added complication of Covid, our non stop lives need management. Here then are the top tips I have discovered as an absolute minimum if you are trying to maintain balance and be kinder to yourself.

• Put yourself in Time Out.

The most obvious need when you feel hemmed in on all sides, is time to yourself. By this I do not mean playing games on your phone or buying cut price clothes online. I mean time alone. My father used to say “You need to like your own company. You never know in life when you are going to have to rely on it.” You need to spend quiet time alone, where the only voice you can hear is your own. It doesn’t matter how, sitting, walking, meditating, as long as you give yourself space.

I know for some, stopping and listening is frightening because you can be scared by what you suspect your inner voice will tell you. It is easier to ignore the still, small voice within and turn up the radio. The trouble with this notion is that at some point in your life you will need to face yourself under stress and it would be advantageous to know what you are dealing with. Knowing your weaknesses and yearnings makes you stronger because you can plan around them. Allowing your inner voice time to speak gives you strength.

• Get outside and burn off some energy

When times are tough, it is easy to withdraw. My natural tendency when faced with difficulty is to hide away. The darker the room, the better. It feels right to make my surroundings match my mood. The mistake here is that I’ve listened to my depressed self. My depressed self is not a good counselor. In actual fact, the opposite of what it tells me is true.

It is amazing how cathartic a walk down by the beach and a coffee is for an overwhelmed mind. To be reminded of the waves that keep coming in, to breathe the salty air and to nod politely at passers by shows me that I am alive and that the world is there to be discovered again.

Burning off energy with exercise by doing something healthy for both my body and mind is always positive. When I arrive home, some of the pain has disappeared and I am up and ticking things off my list. I am letting my behaviour dictate to my mind, rather than the other way around.

• Learn mindfulness. Give your brain a break.

One of the most effective ways to be kind to yourself is to learn mindfulness. This simple process only needs to take 20 minutes and offers your brain a complete rest. The simple fact is that when times are tough, your mind’s natural response is to try to solve the problem by going into overdrive. If the problem doesn’t go away or even gets worse, we tend to ruminate on it constantly or even catastrophise the situation. This gets terribly tiring.

Through mindfulness, we try to focus, non-judgmentally on the present moment. We let the inevitable thoughts that come, float away like clouds in the sky or leaves in a stream. This reminds us that we are not our thoughts. Sometimes we can follow a series of muscle relaxation directions. Sometimes we can listen to helpful music, sometimes we can listen to a Psychologist/ Guide. The key to mindfulness being effective is to establish a routine, find a place where you wont be disturbed and commit to it for a few weeks.

As someone who spent much of his youth fearing the future and regretting past mistakes, I cannot begin to tell you just how peaceful I felt after a good meditation session. My mind was so surprised by the short rest, that it almost didn’t know what to do with itself. It was delightful to realise that my world didn’t come to an abrupt halt because I stopped worrying about it for a few minutes. Let me say though, that routine is key to getting better here. It takes a little time.

• Be creative.

I know this sounds a little airy fairy, but trust me, I have a good reason for it. If everything you do is work related or about keeping the whole show on the road, it is easy to become drained. If everyone is busy taking, who will do the giving? When you create something beautiful, tasty or practical, you have improved your own world. You have taken your focus off the ‘must do’ and put it on the ‘want to’.

It doesn’t matter if it is a sponge cake, a garden hedge or the restoration of a 1968 Ford Ute. It doesn’t matter if its poetry, singing or sketching, as long as its about creativity and passion. One of the creative responses to Depression is in journaling, and for good reason. If you can capture how you feel and decorate the page in your own style, not only will you have expressed yourself, you will have captured a record to remind yourself how far you’ve come in the future. You can even close the cover with a dramatic sense of triumph over adversity if you are so inclined.

• Be kind to others– I know… don’t skip it…it will make sense.

Being kinder to others as a technique for being kind to yourself may sound a little ‘arse about’, but it really is helpful. I have done a verbal survey of a few friends about values, and ‘kindness to others’ is consistently rated in the top ten. Despite this, we live in a world where we we are told constantly that our own life, our opinion and our needs should come first. The notions of sacrifice and service are laughed at by many.

The reason that there are so many volunteers in the world is because these people have realised that being kind is a ‘win win’ situation. Not only does the beneficiary of the kindness feel better, the giver feels better because they’ve lived up to their own values. To be kinder to others is to be kinder to yourself.

We have a beautiful neighbour who is in her nineties. Whenever I pop over and fix something for her or whenever she calls for help, I leave her house afterwards feeling ten feet tall. I feel blessed to help a lady who has spent her life helping others. For the entire time, all I did was think of someone else’s needs and not my own problems.

The summing up

Times really are tough. With viruses, wars, struggling economies and an almost forced hyper connectivity all contributing to our sense of stress and anxiety. At times like these, when everyone and everything fights for a piece of us, we need to look after ourselves. We need to be kinder to ourselves so that we can be the truly valuable person we want to be. By looking after yourself, you will find more of yourself available for the people that really matter.

Links

Kindness and other acts of rebellion » The Good The Bad and The Unrelated

Acts of kindness and compassion | healthdirect