This post from
Toni Bernhard, J.D. on her Turning Straw Into Gold blog at Psychology Today offers some nice quotations on how to treat ourselves with compassion in the face of our losses.
There is never a good reason not to treat yourself with kindness and compassion.
Published on April 21, 2013 by Toni Bernhard, J.D. in Turning Straw Into Gold
Young Woman Braiding Her Hair
When I posted my last article, “8 Things I Miss as a Result of Chronic Pain and Illness,” I wasn’t planning to write a follow-up. But it became clear within hours of posting it that the piece had struck a chord with many readers. People began sharing the many losses they were feeling as the result of their health limitations. Others said they cried as they read my list because it tapped into their own feelings of deep loss.
By the end of the day, I began to feel that the piece had left some people feeling worse than they had before reading it, even though my intent was to acknowledge how things are for me in a way that I thought might help all of us accept our life as it is.
My initial idea for a follow-up was to share other people’s comments about what they miss most due to their health limitations. But my heart dictated otherwise. It said: “It’s enough for us to bear our own losses; what we need is help learning to treat ourselves with compassion over those losses.”
And so, I’ve carefully gathered fifteen quotations that I thought would help with this task. Some are from spiritual teachers; some are from philosophers and other writers; others are from people who have various self-compassion projects in the works (you can Google the names of any people you’d like to know more about). I’ve chosen several portraits by Pierre-Auguste Renoir to accompany the piece.
I hope some of these quotations will enter your heart and perhaps (as they have for me) even find themselves jotted down on scraps of paper to keep by your side.
Madame Renoir
“You are taught that there is something wrong with you and that you are imperfect. But there isn’t and you’re not.” —Cheri Huber
"Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy." —Pema Chödrön
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Often we treat certain aspects of ourselves as junk, having no value. We try to throw parts of ourselves in the garbage. But a human being is an ecosystem, and everything in that system is of value to the whole." —Stephen Schwartz
"If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete." —Jack Kornfield
"Self-compassion is approaching ourselves, our inner experience with spaciousness, with the quality of allowing, which has a quality of gentleness. Instead of our usual tendency to want to get over something, to fix it, to make it go away, the path of compassion is totally different. Compassion allows." —Robert Gonzales
“Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.” —Nathaniel Brand
Paul Meunier
“One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.” —Michael J. Fox
“Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.” —André Gide
“When the heart acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.” —Stephen Levine
“You don’t want to beat yourself up for beating yourself up in the vain hope that it will somehow make you stop beating yourself up. Just as hate can’t conquer hate—but only strengthens and reinforces it—self-judgment can’t stop self-judgment. The best way to counteract self-criticism, therefore, is to understand it, have compassion for it, and then replace it with a kinder response.” —Kristin Neff
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” —Joseph Campbell
Jeanne Samary
“Simplicity, patience, and compassion are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” —Lao Tzu
“It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine.” —Byron Katie
Because this piece is made up largely of quotations, I’ll take the liberty of ending it by quoting myself from my upcoming book:
“We can’t always control the world outside of us, but we can learn to control our inner world, by which I mean how we treat ourselves and how we regard ourselves. In my view, there’s never a good reason not to treat ourselves with the same kindness and compassion that we treat those who are most beloved to us, and there’s never a good reason to regard ourselves as unworthy.”
© 2013 Toni Bernhard www.tonibernhard.com
I'm the author of the Nautilus Gold Medal winner How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and their Caregivers.
My most recent book is titled How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow (September 10, 2013 release date).
Please join me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. You can also subscribe to my blog—see the choices above my picture on this page.
No comments:
Post a Comment