Compassion to Ourselves

Compassion to ourselves.

Here at True Balance Karate in Downers Grove, Illinois, we have a social emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Master H, the owner and Chief Instructor here at the studio. I have two master’s degrees in education and we’ve developed this curriculum to best meet the needs of our youngest students who are three or four, and our oldest student who is eighty-five.

This month we have been talking about compassion. We started off defining it as seeing how someone’s feeling, seeing if someone’s hurt, seeing if someone’s going through something rough and wanting to help. It’s that feeling of, “I want to help you feel better. I want to help you problem solve. I want to make it right.” It’s that feeling that you have when you mix empathy with kindness. And then we talked about all the different people around us that show us compassion on a daily basis.

Last week, we talked about showing compassion in our world, picking up, taking care of things, reducing our use on electricity and things like that. Keeping our spaces clean, taking care of our pets, and how animals show us compassion as much as we show compassion to animals, making sure that we’re doing all the right things that way.

This week we are talking about how do we show compassion to ourselves? And as I’m talking about this with our younger kids, I say to them, “What would you tell a friend if they had a stomachache and they weren’t feeling good?” And they’re like, “Well, I’d tell them to go lay down and take a nap.” And I’m like, “Then that’s what you say to yourself in order to show yourself compassion.” Because they can understand what they would say to a friend.

A friend fell and scraped their knee. How would you show them compassion? Would you tell them to tough it up and get over it? You’re going to be fine? Or would you run and get a bandaid and maybe give them a hug? It’s that compassionate act that you want to make sure that you’re doing for yourself.

Same thing goes when you’re taking a test in school and you don’t do as well as you thought you were going to, and your friend is sitting next to you. Let’s say it’s them who didn’t do well on a test, and it’s them who sitting there going, “Oh, I’m so dumb. I’m so stupid. I can’t believe I did that. I should have studied more.” Would you look at your friend and say, “Yeah, yeah, you are.” Or would you look at them and say, “No, you’re not. You’ll get it next time. Why don’t you study what you got wrong so that you can do better the next time you take this test? Learn from those mistakes. We’ll all grow.” We’ll give them all those good positive self-talk moments is what we’d say to our friend. If we’re showing compassion to ourselves, we need to do the same thing.

If we are having a stomachache, a horrible migraine, something like maybe you’ve broken a leg or an arm and you need to actually rest or something like that. When you have those moments where you need to rest, then you need to rest. And that is a entirely okay. If you are showing compassion to yourself, you’ll be much better off if you take that moment.

If you were working on a big project at work and it’s not going well and you’ve been asked to redo it, that does not make you dumb or stupid or messing up or, “I’m going to get fired” or any of that stuff. It means that you’re human and you’re going to learn and you’re going to grow and you’re going to make it better and you’re going to fix it and you’re going to be better because of it.

When we show ourself compassion, when we grant ourselves that little bit of grace and understanding, that’s when that’s really giving ourselves a moment of kindness. We’re really giving ourselves a moment of, “It’s okay,” because that’s how we show compassion to ourselves, is when we take a moment and we see what we need.

As adults, we’re always on the go. We are always, always going, and we need to take care of this and we need to take care of that, and I swear, I have a multitude of things on my to-do list and my tasks that need to get done. But if I’m showing compassion to myself, I am still reminding myself that it will all get done. It will all happen. It will all get done. It will all be okay. We just need to take a moment and breathe. If that means sitting in the chair and reading for a few minutes, that’s okay too.

So, compassion for ourselves is really actually listening to what it is that we need, and then granting ourselves a little bit of grace and a little bit of opportunity to give ourselves that. If you wouldn’t say it to a friend, don’t say it to yourself. That’s the easiest way to show compassion to yourself.

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the mat!

True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!