Be Kind to Your Vulnerable Self Through Mindfulness
Instead of Scolding Yourself for Reactions, Be Kind to Yourself and Analyze Them Instead
“To love oneself,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “is the beginning of a life-long romance.” As is the tale of every love story, times will bring both sun and storm, testing our earnest purposes on how we relate to ourselves.
Love comes easy on good days when our confidence stands tall on our accomplishments. It’s when we fall that our self-directed benevolence often deserts us. Suddenly, we remember all our faults—our internal monologue muds with unforgiving judgments.
We blame and humiliate ourselves for our pain. One way to winning back our own hearts and recovering our well-being is through self-compassion.
The cruelest person in the world when it comes to making you feel bad about your reactions is—guess who?—yes. It’s yourself. So often when a person does something, they’ll immediately start berating themselves.
It might be internally with negative self-talk or it might be loudly speaking. Everything from “I’m so stupid” to “Only I would do something that ridiculous” can be a form of scolding. So if a lot of people tend to scold themselves for their reactions, then what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that when you scold yourself for what you feel, for what you think or for your reactions, you end up strengthening negative beliefs about yourself.
When you do that, it can erode your satisfaction in every area of your life from work to your personal relationships.
You run the risk of getting stuck in a rut of continually belittling your reactions to everything, even the positive stuff. You have to stop scolding yourself if you want to live your best life.
Rather than scolding yourself, making yourself feel bad, and keeping a negative mindset about yourself, be kind. You deserve kindness from every area of your life, from every person in your life, and you deserve it from yourself.
To stop the cycle of scolding yourself, become aware of why you react the way that you do. More often than not, our reactions are not off the cuff.
There’s a reason for the way that we behave.
Usually, it’s because we have thought patterns and behaviors that we fall back on in every situation. But the way that you react is what makes you who you are. It’s all the experiences you’ve had in life up to now.
Remember that just because you react a certain way doesn’t make you a bad person.
You’re simply a human being who has feelings, and you’re doing the best that you can so don’t judge yourself.
Be as kind to yourself as you would to your best friend or to someone you love deeply.
Learn to analyze your reactions. When you analyze your responses, you can learn from them.
By understanding the reason that you do what you do, you can make changes if you need to. Mindfulness can help you to analyze your reactions, and you’ll learn why you react that way, and you’ll learn self-acceptance, too.
When you accept yourself, it’s easier to be kinder to yourself. You can analyze your reactions by asking yourself what you were thinking or feeling when you reacted the way that you did.
Being Vulnerable Isn’t a Bad Thing When You Know How to Be Mindful
Not many people like the world vulnerable. The reason they don’t like the word is that they think that being vulnerable means being easy prey for the strong. So instead of embracing vulnerability, we tend to shy away from it.
We barricade our hearts and minds from anything we feel might hurt us.
This can also be referring to as keeping our hearts protected. We act like keepers of the gate of our heart, never truly letting anyone get close.
But vulnerability isn’t a bad thing when you know how to be mindful.
When you practice mindfulness, it doesn’t mean that you’re protecting yourself from ever being hurt again. It means that you’re going to live your life with abundance and in the present regardless of what “might” happen if you open yourself up.
When you use mindfulness, it allows you to be who you indeed are. Loving and open. True to yourself and fully human. Practicing mindfulness means that you don’t shy away from being vulnerable.
You don’t try to hide your imperfections.
You accept that you have them, you love yourself through them and you allow others to see your flaws and love you with them. This lets you not have to pretend to be different to get others to accept you.
With mindfulness, you’re simply who you are. When connected with mindfulness, being vulnerable opens up a circle of freedom and acceptance for yourself as well as for the people in your life.
It means that you won’t barricade your heart behind a wall of fear and past hurts. You’ll let whatever comes your way show up – knowing that when it does, you’ll have the courage and strength to face it head-on and come out stronger for it.
Mindfulness with vulnerability lets you make deeper connections.
This can alleviate loneliness, feelings of anxiety, sadness and more. You build stronger relationships with the people in your life when you allow yourself to be vulnerable.
You’re able to love people more openly and to accept that love in return. When you’re vulnerable through mindfulness, you’ll grow more as a person. You’ll be able to take yourself in a way that you never have before.
You’ll become less judgmental of your own faults and the faults of others. When you let yourself be vulnerable, you can create greater depths of love, trust, and acceptance. You’ll feel happier with life, have less stress and gain peace.
The biggest thing that you’ll gain is the ability to be vulnerable with yourself emotionally. Too often we don’t explore our deepest thoughts and emotions because there’s pain there and we don’t want to be defenseless against that.
We know it’s going to hurt if we just let go. But when you’re vulnerable with yourself, you’ll find that you’re able to stop running from your emotions and you’re ready to let go of the things that hurt you because you’ll be able to face and acknowledge them.
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