It’s January, a time of resolutions and reevaluation, but did we make our resolutions from our heart? Are they things we truly hold dear, or do some of them have their roots in self-criticism and feelings of not being good enough in some way?

There’s a familiar weight many of us carry, one that filters our perceptions and tightens around us with every imagined misstep. It’s the heaviness of “shoulds.” I should have done more. I should be better at this. I should be healthier, slimmer, more productive, calmer. Demands that weigh heavily on us and fuel further self-criticism and judgement.

What if there were a healthier approach we could take with ourselves? A much kinder, sweeter and wholly realistic approach. Something that increases our sense of well-being, allows us to live true to ourselves, and leads us to healthier decisions naturally, without force, self-criticism or judgement. There is! It is mindful self-compassion.

We may suspect that self-compassion would be indulgent, or that it would let us off the hook so that we wouldn’t feel motivated to do anything. In fact, the reverse is true. Have you ever noticed that the better you feel the more you get done? Feeling good is energising and empowering, while criticism and judgments drain our energy and actually set us up for failure.

Mindful self-compassion allows us to step back and see a fuller picture: we are human and to err is human. And that is okay! We learn from our mistakes and that learning helps us to make better decisions in future. What we thought of as a failure or a fudge up can be reframed as pausing compassionately for reevaluation. When we pause compassionately we haven’t failed or fudged up, we are just allowing ourselves a mindful moment for processing before taking the next step.

With mindful self-compassion we empower ourselves to
🔹 Check in with our heart to see whether what we are trying to do is in alignment with our values
🔹 Be kind to ourselves when we think we have fudged something—perhaps speaking to ourselves as we would speak to a friend in the same position
🔹 Check what we are believing about the situation and ask ourselves how we would be and what we might do differently if we didn’t have those beliefs
🔹 Take time out for meditation so that we can access our inner wisdom, see more clearly, enjoy things more fully, and move through challenges with a greater sense of calm and ease
🔹 Observe habits with compassion and kindness rather than judgement and criticism. Kindness and compassion make things softer; judgement hardens and solidifies.

So let the “shoulds” fall away. In their absence, you’ll find something far more valuable: the freedom to be fully yourself. And in that freedom, you may discover a wellspring of strength, resilience, self-love, and, perhaps, a whole new view of the world, too!