×

We use cookies to help make LingQ better. By visiting the site, you agree to our cookie policy.

image

Happiness, 2.12 (V) Week 2 Video 10 - A practice for when things are not goin… - Self-compa

2.12 (V) Week 2 Video 10 - A practice for when things are not goin… - Self-compa

[MUSIC] Hi there. Welcome back. So far this week, I've discussed how many of us have this need for superiority and how it lowers our happiness levels. I also discussed how we would be better off both from the perspective of enhancing our own happiness levels and from the perspective of achieving success by pursuing flow, rather than pursuing superiority. I discuss two main ways of getting to experience more flow, first, through hobbies and second, by transitioning to a job that you find to be more meaningful and fulfilling. Pursuing flow is the second habit of the highly happy, the habit that is an antidote to the second sin which is chasing superiority. Now, if you're able to find more flow in your life from now on, great. You will definitely find your life to be more fulfilling as a lot of studies have shown. But, in addition to getting to experiencing more flow in your life, you might wonder what else could you do if you want to enhance your happiness levels and fulfillment. And that, to that question I will say, the answer is getting rid or at least mitigating, making it less prominent, this need for superiority. Otherwise, what might happen is that you find your flow, become a master of your domain, and then you start reaping the rewards and being recognized by everybody around you for your mastery and fall into the need for superiority trap. Many people have fallen into this trap. They start with being lucky enough to know their element, and then show the maturity and the dedication needed to nurture this talent by spending those 10,000 hours or more to master any domain, and then once the wealth and the fame and the power start flowing in, they completely lose the plot and become wrecks. To avoid this pitfall, I'm going to suggest a two-pronged practice for mitigating the need for superiority. First practice is for when things are going badly. For example, you've just had a string of failures. The second practice is for when life is going well. For example, you've just had a string of successes. The practices are self compassion, for when things are going badly, and gratitude when things are going well. I'll get to gratitude and how to practice it, shortly. But first let me turn to self compassion, which many of you may not be familiar with. Imagine that you've just failed at something important. For example, you did badly in a test or you weren't there to help somebody when they really needed you. In these types of situations, most of us can't help but feel a sense of shame and guilt. We might even feel fear, anxiety, or even depression. As Professor Kristen Neff, one of my colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin notes, we are often our worst enemies when we haven't achieved as much as we wanted to or we haven't behaved like we wanted to. Here's Professor Neff talking about this topic. Take a listen. » The way people talk to themselves is way more unkind and cruel than they would ever talk to a friend, and certainly no one they cared about, like their child. » As you just heard, Professor Neff finds that we're often much harsher on ourselves than we are on other people. One reason for this is because we feel that the negative self talk is going to motivate us to work harder and do better the next time. But in reality the negative self talk just gets us down and makes us feel miserable. As a result, far from motivating us to do better actually demotivates us. I recently had the opportunity to interview professor Kristin Neff about whether being self critical makes us perform better or worse. Here's what she had to say. Listen. » People really believe they need to be critical, harshly critical of themselves to motivate themselves. That if they don't use the whip, they'll just be lazy and self indulgent and they won’t try. Of course research shows exactly the opposite. Think of a coach. If a coach said you're crap, you're never going to make anything in the world, I'm ashamed of you. Totally demotivating, and yet we say that to ourselves thinking it's going to help. So if you're kind, supportive, encouraging, it actually helps you be motivated to reach your goals. I'm not sure where people get that conception. Part of me thinks it's left over from our child rearing philosophies, spare the rod, spoil the child, and we kind of dropped it for children, but we still keep it with ourselves perhaps. » So in other words, not only does being self critical make us feel bad, it doesn't make us more productive or successful either. This means that we need to find another way of dealing with failures. We need to find a new way of engaging with ourselves. Professor Neff suggests that the way in which we should engage with ourselves when things are going badly, is by being self compassionate, but what exactly is self compassion? Here I'm going to let Professor Neff do the talking again. » The easy way to define self compassion is really treating yourself with the same kindness, and care, and concern that you'd show to a good friend. Especially when they're suffering or had failed or made a mistake. Of course, most of us are much, much harder on ourselves than we are to our good friends. So, self compassion really turns that around. So, it involves being kind to yourself, as opposed to harshly judgemental. Also really important with self compassion, it involves recognition of common humanity. Now logically, we all know that everyone's imperfect and that no one leads a perfect life, this is something we know logically. But if you watch what happens when we fail, or we get that diagnosis or something happens, we feel like something has gone wrong, like this shouldn't be happening, as if baseline normal is everything's perfect, and it's just me who's failed or it's just me who's had this news. And that feeling that this is abnormal actually creates a sense of isolation, which is very, very damaging psychologically. So self compassion involves recognizing that suffering and imperfection are part of the shared human condition, and that in fact every time we suffer, it's really an opportunity to feel more connected with others. Then the third component of self compassion is mindfulness. And that may not be as obvious, but mindfulness refers to being present with what is, without resistance and kind of accepting what is, even if it's uncomfortable. Most of us don't want to admit that we're suffering, right? We'd rather fight it, or avoid it, run away from it. So in order to open our hearts to ourselves, we have to turn toward our suffering, and be with it as it is for long enough for us to respond with caring concern. So those are really the three components, self kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. » So as you just heard, self compassion has three components. First component is self kindness. Second is common humanity. And the third is mindfulness. The first component is the most central one, being nice to yourself. Just like you would be to a good friend or someone that you really cared about. The question of course is how do you practice self compassion. But before I get to that, I think it is important to note that self compassion is not the same thing as self pity or self indulgence. This is very important to note, because as you will hear Professor Neff saying, one of the big reasons why people aren't as self compassionate as they should be is because they confuse it with self pity. Here's Professor Kristin Neff again. » There's a lot of, I would say, misconceptions or misgivings people have about self compassion, which are encouraged by the culture. So, if people don't really know what self compassion is, they may confuse it with self pity. Right? Oh, poor me. Woe is me. Of course, self compassion is life is difficult for everyone. » So now that we have a better understanding of what self compassion is and what it isn't, let's turn to how you can practice it. Here's professor Kristin Neff one last time talking about how to practice self compassion. » A lot of people think they can't be self compassionate, they don't know how, but pretty much everyone has the experience of being compassionate to a friend, we actually know what to say. And that's the easiest way to access self compassion, is to think, wow, if I had a close friend in this exact same situation who just failed and this happened, what would I say? And then try it out with yourself. It seems weird at first, it seems silly, and you may not believe it, but if you try it and set your intention to be kinder, and you listen to those words, it's really amazing that we have this tool at our disposal. Then I would say on my website, things like self compassionate letter writing, kind of a similar process. You write yourself a letter from the perspective of very compassionate friend. And research shows that is you do that for seven days in a row, it decreases depression for three months. It increases happiness for six months. So, things like that are pretty powerful. It's turning out that it's easier than you might think to raise people's self compassion levels, which is encouraging. » So according to Professor Neff, one of the most effective ways to practice self compassion is by asking yourself what you would say to a good friend if he or she were in your shoes and then you say those very things to yourself. Or an alternative is to pull out a letter pad, and write a letter to yourself that's a self compassionate one. As you just heard, Professor Neff finds that these types of strategies are amazingly effective, even if you feel that they wouldn't work when you start out. If you want to learn more about self-compassion, and what it can do for you, please go to Professor Neff's website, which is www.self-compassion.org. So, to summarize the discussion in this video, the healthy way to deal with failures and setbacks is not to get out the whip and start whipping yourself, and self flagellating. But to be kind and understanding with ourselves. Not only will this help us feel better about ourselves, it will also lead us to become more resilient and successful in the long run. Also, when we engage in [SOUND] self compassion, we are less likely to stroke the need for superiority over other people. Remember that as Professor Kristin Neff mentioned, a major part of self compassion is common humanity. The recognition that failures and setbacks are a part of life and that everybody experiences that. [SOUND] So self compassion connects us with other people, rather than separating us from them. By contrast the need for superiority separates us from others. That's it for this video. In the next video I want to turn to happiness factors for when things are going well, the practice of gratitude. Till then, adios amigo. [MUSIC]


2.12 (V) Week 2 Video 10 - A practice for when things are not goin… - Self-compa

[MUSIC] Hi there. Welcome back. So far this week, I've discussed how many of us have this need for superiority and how it lowers our happiness levels. I also discussed how we would be better off both from the perspective of enhancing our own happiness levels and from the perspective of achieving success by pursuing flow, rather than pursuing superiority. I discuss two main ways of getting to experience more flow, first, through hobbies and second, by transitioning to a job that you find to be more meaningful and fulfilling. Pursuing flow is the second habit of the highly happy, the habit that is an antidote to the second sin which is chasing superiority. Now, if you're able to find more flow in your life from now on, great. You will definitely find your life to be more fulfilling as a lot of studies have shown. But, in addition to getting to experiencing more flow in your life, you might wonder what else could you do if you want to enhance your happiness levels and fulfillment. And that, to that question I will say, the answer is getting rid or at least mitigating, making it less prominent, this need for superiority. Otherwise, what might happen is that you find your flow, become a master of your domain, and then you start reaping the rewards and being recognized by everybody around you for your mastery and fall into the need for superiority trap. Many people have fallen into this trap. They start with being lucky enough to know their element, and then show the maturity and the dedication needed to nurture this talent by spending those 10,000 hours or more to master any domain, and then once the wealth and the fame and the power start flowing in, they completely lose the plot and become wrecks. To avoid this pitfall, I'm going to suggest a two-pronged practice for mitigating the need for superiority. First practice is for when things are going badly. For example, you've just had a string of failures. The second practice is for when life is going well. For example, you've just had a string of successes. The practices are self compassion, for when things are going badly, and gratitude when things are going well. I'll get to gratitude and how to practice it, shortly. But first let me turn to self compassion, which many of you may not be familiar with. Imagine that you've just failed at something important. For example, you did badly in a test or you weren't there to help somebody when they really needed you. In these types of situations, most of us can't help but feel a sense of shame and guilt. We might even feel fear, anxiety, or even depression. As Professor Kristen Neff, one of my colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin notes, we are often our worst enemies when we haven't achieved as much as we wanted to or we haven't behaved like we wanted to. Here's Professor Neff talking about this topic. Take a listen. » The way people talk to themselves is way more unkind and cruel than they would ever talk to a friend, and certainly no one they cared about, like their child. » As you just heard, Professor Neff finds that we're often much harsher on ourselves than we are on other people. One reason for this is because we feel that the negative self talk is going to motivate us to work harder and do better the next time. But in reality the negative self talk just gets us down and makes us feel miserable. As a result, far from motivating us to do better actually demotivates us. I recently had the opportunity to interview professor Kristin Neff about whether being self critical makes us perform better or worse. Here's what she had to say. Listen. » People really believe they need to be critical, harshly critical of themselves to motivate themselves. That if they don't use the whip, they'll just be lazy and self indulgent and they won’t try. Of course research shows exactly the opposite. Think of a coach. If a coach said you're crap, you're never going to make anything in the world, I'm ashamed of you. Totally demotivating, and yet we say that to ourselves thinking it's going to help. So if you're kind, supportive, encouraging, it actually helps you be motivated to reach your goals. I'm not sure where people get that conception. Part of me thinks it's left over from our child rearing philosophies, spare the rod, spoil the child, and we kind of dropped it for children, but we still keep it with ourselves perhaps. » So in other words, not only does being self critical make us feel bad, it doesn't make us more productive or successful either. This means that we need to find another way of dealing with failures. We need to find a new way of engaging with ourselves. Professor Neff suggests that the way in which we should engage with ourselves when things are going badly, is by being self compassionate, but what exactly is self compassion? Here I'm going to let Professor Neff do the talking again. » The easy way to define self compassion is really treating yourself with the same kindness, and care, and concern that you'd show to a good friend. Especially when they're suffering or had failed or made a mistake. Of course, most of us are much, much harder on ourselves than we are to our good friends. So, self compassion really turns that around. So, it involves being kind to yourself, as opposed to harshly judgemental. Also really important with self compassion, it involves recognition of common humanity. Now logically, we all know that everyone's imperfect and that no one leads a perfect life, this is something we know logically. But if you watch what happens when we fail, or we get that diagnosis or something happens, we feel like something has gone wrong, like this shouldn't be happening, as if baseline normal is everything's perfect, and it's just me who's failed or it's just me who's had this news. And that feeling that this is abnormal actually creates a sense of isolation, which is very, very damaging psychologically. So self compassion involves recognizing that suffering and imperfection are part of the shared human condition, and that in fact every time we suffer, it's really an opportunity to feel more connected with others. Then the third component of self compassion is mindfulness. And that may not be as obvious, but mindfulness refers to being present with what is, without resistance and kind of accepting what is, even if it's uncomfortable. Most of us don't want to admit that we're suffering, right? We'd rather fight it, or avoid it, run away from it. So in order to open our hearts to ourselves, we have to turn toward our suffering, and be with it as it is for long enough for us to respond with caring concern. So those are really the three components, self kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. » So as you just heard, self compassion has three components. First component is self kindness. Second is common humanity. And the third is mindfulness. The first component is the most central one, being nice to yourself. Just like you would be to a good friend or someone that you really cared about. The question of course is how do you practice self compassion. But before I get to that, I think it is important to note that self compassion is not the same thing as self pity or self indulgence. This is very important to note, because as you will hear Professor Neff saying, one of the big reasons why people aren't as self compassionate as they should be is because they confuse it with self pity. Here's Professor Kristin Neff again. » There's a lot of, I would say, misconceptions or misgivings people have about self compassion, which are encouraged by the culture. So, if people don't really know what self compassion is, they may confuse it with self pity. Right? Oh, poor me. Woe is me. Of course, self compassion is life is difficult for everyone. » So now that we have a better understanding of what self compassion is and what it isn't, let's turn to how you can practice it. Here's professor Kristin Neff one last time talking about how to practice self compassion. » A lot of people think they can't be self compassionate, they don't know how, but pretty much everyone has the experience of being compassionate to a friend, we actually know what to say. And that's the easiest way to access self compassion, is to think, wow, if I had a close friend in this exact same situation who just failed and this happened, what would I say? And then try it out with yourself. It seems weird at first, it seems silly, and you may not believe it, but if you try it and set your intention to be kinder, and you listen to those words, it's really amazing that we have this tool at our disposal. Then I would say on my website, things like self compassionate letter writing, kind of a similar process. You write yourself a letter from the perspective of very compassionate friend. And research shows that is you do that for seven days in a row, it decreases depression for three months. It increases happiness for six months. So, things like that are pretty powerful. It's turning out that it's easier than you might think to raise people's self compassion levels, which is encouraging. » So according to Professor Neff, one of the most effective ways to practice self compassion is by asking yourself what you would say to a good friend if he or she were in your shoes and then you say those very things to yourself. Or an alternative is to pull out a letter pad, and write a letter to yourself that's a self compassionate one. As you just heard, Professor Neff finds that these types of strategies are amazingly effective, even if you feel that they wouldn't work when you start out. If you want to learn more about self-compassion, and what it can do for you, please go to Professor Neff's website, which is www.self-compassion.org. So, to summarize the discussion in this video, the healthy way to deal with failures and setbacks is not to get out the whip and start whipping yourself, and self flagellating. But to be kind and understanding with ourselves. Not only will this help us feel better about ourselves, it will also lead us to become more resilient and successful in the long run. Also, when we engage in [SOUND] self compassion, we are less likely to stroke the need for superiority over other people. Remember that as Professor Kristin Neff mentioned, a major part of self compassion is common humanity. The recognition that failures and setbacks are a part of life and that everybody experiences that. [SOUND] So self compassion connects us with other people, rather than separating us from them. By contrast the need for superiority separates us from others. That's it for this video. In the next video I want to turn to happiness factors for when things are going well, the practice of gratitude. Till then, adios amigo. [MUSIC]