It begins right here. There is no one I want to feel compassion for more than myself. Compassion for myself, self- compassion is where I begin.
Of all the things I want to unlearn, self-criticism is perhaps the most difficult to tear down. But there is no one I need more to forgive than myself. I actually think it is shallow and maybe useless to forgive others unless I have shed my own sense of guilt.
I was raised on a steady diet of self-criticism and guilt. I grew robust, and at an early age I learned and practiced guilt as a virtue. I learned that to be forgiven by someone, to be cleansed, I first needed to experience and confess to failure. Nothing could have likely prepared me better to be unable to deal with and accept my shortcomings. I was not trained in self-compassion.
My naturally sharp mind was sharpened to see the shortcomings in myself and then in others. For this I was habitually rewarded by my culture, something that persists into adulthood. It built within me an unrealistic and fragile sense of self. Rather than be so industrious in constructing such an illusory sense of self, I wish I had been more adept at forgiving and accepting of who I am. I wish I had learned more self-compassion.
I have begun to turn all that around. I am more content to accept and not criticize my shortcomings. I understand myself better and accept my apparent failures. Forgiveness has become a self-healing balm, and it has become more easy to share its abundance with others. This is possible because I am becoming a pliant student of the nature of self-compassion.