How Traveling Solo Taught Me the Most About Self-Compassion

Two years ago I joined a mindfulness program that has encouraged me to meditate every single morning, engage in morning exercise, and incorporate mantras into my day - all this with the intention to enhance my own sense of self-compassion. Wherein I have read books on the topic and even developed my own personal exercises for them, I realized that nothing could enhance my own self-compassion more than going out into the world all by myself. I always believed that learning happened best through actual experience. While we can sit down and do self-compassion exercises, going on solo flight to a place completely unknown taught me a few things about what it meant to be compassionate.

3 Ways to Become More Authentic with Everybody

Au·then·tic·i·ty - a word that has been making waves everywhere lately has millenials and spiritual movements alike placing value on increased self-awareness. The word itself refers to reliability, dependability, accuracy, fidelity, and credibility, suggesting that in order to be trusted, one would first need to be completely honest with themselves, look deep into both the good and the ugly. It is also a value that we can place on the way that we live life and treat other people.

Self-Compassion as a Stepping Stone to Health Behavior Change

Self-compassion, as it turns out, demands that we go beyond our comfort zones. While compassion may seem like the complete opposite of courage, I soon learned that courage and self-compassion actually came hand-in-hand. Research shows that self-awareness plays a huge part in developing health behavior change, but if the awareness of ourselves is generally unpleasant, then we may look to food or other concrete aspects (like cigarettes, alcohol, etc) of life instead of long-term health goals (Adams & Leary, 2007). Through better understanding of the self, however, my research has shown that self-compassion can help us acknowledge visible flaws that we might be willing to act upon.

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