Why Self-Compassion is the first skill to develop for Business Success?

Self-Compassion what you need to know…

In 2021 many of us are inspired to have their own business and work from home. Are you planning or developing a self-employed career as well?

If you do, then I am curious: Do you often feel as if you didn’t have what it takes, what you need to launch that product, to start that blog or podcast, to do that fundraising? When you feel stuck in indecision and fail to act, do you scold yourself? When failure happens, do you feel alone as if we’re the only person who has erred? Being hard on oneself seems to be a response that comes naturally and is very familiar to many ambitious people. It is often considered to be a factor of motivation. Yet I see it rather as a pitfall.

A Self-Employed Career requires a set of skills

It is also often said that to go into self-employment you require a solid sense of high self-esteem and unstoppable self-confidence.

Yes, these are certainly essential, but I see them as the roof of a building, which needs a much more solid foundation to get sustained. And that foundation must always be a deeply ingrained attitude of self-compassion.

To work on self-esteem and self-confidence without addressing and improving a person’s self-compassionate emotional response is like being on a mission impossible. Striving for confidence without sustainable compassion for one’s errors and failures is a Sisyphean task, endless and futile. You keep doing it, but it is never done.

Why? Because self-criticism withers people, self-compassion builds them up.

What is Self-Compassion?

As you can already guess, it is your willingness to take good care of yourself in times of disappointment or embarrassment. It is a delicate nuance of grace felt within at all times. It is like mindful attention without judgment.

Think of it like that: “What would be the kindest response you could give yourself in times of an ultimate failure?” That would be self-compassion.

To be self-compassionate means to make a deliberate effort to forgive yourself for your errors and do it sincerely. To look at your perceived flaws and still feel wholesome and comfortable within your own skin.

Why Self-Compassion is superior to Self-Esteem and Confidence?

In Self-Esteem matters, you usually take pride in being hard on yourself as a sign of ambition.
Ambition to become your Best Self. Striving to be the best version of you often comes with a sense of competition too. This creates tension and puts pressure on you and easily makes you crumble in case of failure. Why?

Because it feeds on being liked under a condition, on having success as a measurement of your enoughness, your worthiness. Therefore it is not the most stable foundation for personal well-being, as no one can win at all times.

On the other side, an overly high Self-Esteem can easily propel you to hasty decisions, overestimating yourself, showing aggression to and even bullying others if you believe that wrong has been done to you.

And here comes the big one. Watch this out: The how-to-get-on-a-high-horse-quest gives plenty of food for self-criticism.

Many people with ambition, fired up by the next brilliant idea to expand their business tend to go critical of themselves when things do not go as planned. We have been conditioned to believe that self-blame, self-shame, and self-criticism act as high motivators for self-improvement. What a myth!

Nothing withers people more than turning against themselves. It turns on self-doubt and takes their power away.

The Importance of qualitative Self-Talk for success

The most important words you will ever hear in your life are the word you say to yourself. Your mind is on 24/7. It listens to your words while you are awake and internalizes them while you sleep. So when you wake up again, you can begin acting upon them in faith. If you call yourself a loser, your faith will be invested in this belief, you will think like a loser and act like a loser and feel very low and down. Never use harsh, critical words on yourself, no matter what your results look like. Make your words compassionate.

Try to make yourself feel an inch better than a moment ago. If you had a friend who has just messed things up like you believe you did, what would you say to them? Learn to be that same warm, supportive friend to yourself.

What is wrong with being unreasonably approving of yourself at all times?

I will tell you what is wrong. Your mind programming is wrong. Your faith is invested in the belief of “I am not enough” in one way or another. As a rule, people understand the concept of worthiness and can logically see that they have all the good reasons to feel good about themselves. But only in times of achievement and success. Not so much in times of disappointment and disillusion. Do you also believe that you need to have a reason to feel good about yourself for just being you for no other reason?

People understand it, but do not feel like it. As I said their faith is invested elsewhere. In the story of their childhood conditioning. In thoughts like that:

I am an idiot. Messed up again. I will never make it right.
Did not finish the project on time. I am a failure.
Should have known better, but I did not. I am such a loser.
Have nothing to offer. I am too young to have the skills, I am too old to begin again, it is too late.
No one takes me seriously.
I am so confused. Others seem stronger, quicker, more. SHAME on ME!

No one can ever be successful in life and business with self-talk of such low quality.

Go back and unpick your story

Thought of this kind promotes self-criticism and no one can be self-compassionate with such self-talk either.

Your self-employed career puts a lot of demand on you, requires you to grow and then it grows with you. But your number one job is and will always be to first figure your personal story out.

Why do you feel like you do? What happened to you as a child. Why are you so critical of yourself? In which way you do not feel “enough”.

In a hypnotherapy session, you go into regression, into a deeply relaxed and focused state of mind to find out where, when, and why you lost your in-born self-acceptance and self-love. Because no baby is born with an attitude of self-blame. Children learn that later. As a child, you learn what you live. All children after the age of 2 must idealize their parents or caregivers because children intuitively sense that survival depends on the adults. And when something goes wrong in the grown-up world, children would never blame the grown-ups, children will blame themselves.

Clients’ stories

Like Maria said to me in a session: ” Oh, I know now. I remember, my parents used to leave me babysitting my baby brother when I myself was only 4 years old. They would go out only to come back home in 2 hours and find the room is messy, my brother is crying and I am crying too. I felt so useless back then. Felt like I have disappointed my parents. I was not able to cope. Shame on me!

Like Gregory said to me in a session: ” Yes, I can see it clearly now. I am coming home late because on the way back from school I went to look for flowers to gift my mom on her birthday night. As I did not come home at the usual time, she was worried and as soon as she saw me, she burst out shouting at me, not paying much attention to the flowers I was holding in my hand. I thought to myself: “I am so inappropriate. Why can I never do the right thing at the right time? Shame on me!

Like George said to me in a session: ” Look at that scene coming up to me now. I am in 3rd grade at school. I am not getting the maths lesson. Everyone else in the class is getting it, except me. This must mean that I am not smart enough. I am so embarrassed. Shame on me!

Children are meaning-making machines. It is not so much what had happened, it is about the meaning, the interpretation a child would give to what happens.

How you can develop a self-compassionate attitude that is fast and lasting

What makes hypnotherapy so powerful is that it helps you see clearly and change that interpretation and connect a different emotion to what happened. How you reacted as a child was age-appropriate, yet, you are not that child anymore. Feeling like “Shame on me” doesn’t make sense anymore. As an adult, you have the power to re-parent yourself and choose a different perspective.

What hypnosis does for you, it helps you code in dynamic, powerful words that shut down that inner critic and restore your emotional equilibrium. When you change the way you believe about things, you change the way you feel about things.

You deserve to have mind programming that allows you to feel wholesome and self-compassionate as you face the challenges that a self-employed career throws your way.

You deserve to have a mind programming that allows you to see challenges as opportunities and have a solid foundation for your unstoppable confidence, building upon the willingness to care and nurture yourself at the same time as you are caring for and nurturing others.

Acquiring a lens of self-compassion can enhance both, mental and physical well-being.

It makes mindfulness a part of your attitude in daily life and business. How do you think your results might change if you responded to yourself in the same way as you typically respond to a close friend when he or she is suffering?

Get a sense of safety to confront your weaknesses and make positive changes
Mute your stress response to the outside environment and your mental anguish that disturbs your focus
Show steadiness and resilience that your business needs the most
Avoid self-destructive behaviors like addictions and will feel more inclined to take good care of your body, diet, and exercise routine, therefore being more productive
Drop the self-defensiveness and the wallowing in a sense of hopelessness and victimhood, that self-criticism brings in

Conclusion

Everybody has something about themselves they do not like, something that they would rather not have or be, something to feel insecure about. The sooner you address it, the healthier your approach to business matters will turn out to be.

Self-compassion makes you stronger. The stronger you are, the stronger your business grows.

Let’s get in touch!

Does this sound interesting to you? Do you have questions?

Have you already become aware for yourself that there is some inner inventory you need to make in order to upgrade your mindset and therefore your business?

You can reach out to me. Let us have a short get-acquainted call. I am willing to gift you 30 min of my time.

Once I get to know your situation, we will come out with a plan about how you can finally get rid of the sticky limiting beliefs blocking you from the success you are.

You can contact me here: fightyourfears.eu

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