Being Kind to Yourself is Easier than You Think
Compassion And The Importance of Accepting Ourselves
Compassion is the foundation for self-acceptance
It is often said that “hardships build character,” the idea being that tough times are a valuable teaching experience.
For many of us, hardship can be an unpleasant but formative process, forcing us to reflect on our own weaknesses and grow stronger. But there’s another way to see life’s hardships; They are valuable messages to ourselves about the ways in which we need to change.
Life Gives Us Wisdom
What if we kept learning from our hard times? What if things went wrong in order to teach us a lesson that would help us become stronger, better people? Or maybe it made us realize we were far more fragile than we thought. This is the kind of life that author Brian Christian describes in his book, The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive.
“The life cycle is like a series of attempts at learning things,” he explains. “It’s like an intelligent algorithm created by eons of evolution and serendipity that has struck upon a formula for solving the general problem of being alive. The formula is this; we make some mistakes, suffer a little, and then fix it so we can do it again.”
This is the story of Brian Christian’s life, he began his book with several explainers for his readers about how he became an entrepreneur.
“If you want to be happy and fulfilled,” Brian Christian explains, “You’re not going to get there by worrying about getting rich; You’re not going to get there by being obsessed with your accomplishments or work schedule. If you want to be happy and fulfilled, you’re going to have to learn how to learn and accept the reality that failure is a cornerstone of life, that all of your hard work and achievement will come at a price. But if you think failure is just a bad thing, then you’re going to have a miserable life. That’s why I want everyone reading this book to know that failure is not some evil thing.”
Failure Is an Opportunity for Change
Instead, Brian Christian says failure is an opportunity for change. “When you fail,” says Brian Christian, “You should see it as an opportunity to learn something about yourself. You should try to figure out why you failed, and whether it’s something that you can try again.”
And Brian Christian has learned to embrace failure after failing at a number of startups and in his personal life. “I tried a lot of things that didn’t work out,” he says. “I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned something from every failure. I tried to be aware of why the failures happened and what I could do to keep it from happening again.”
He says that failure isn’t something we should fear, but instead an indication we are human. “We are all flawed,” he says. “There’s no such thing as perfect. We all make mistakes, and we can all learn from those mistakes. The more mistakes you make and the more you learn, the better life you will have.”
“The most human human is someone who understands that life is hard, that there will be problems and failures and heartache,” Brian Christian says. “But that’s okay. Those are a part of being alive. The most important thing is to be able to accept yourself for who you are, for all of your strengths and weaknesses. And then you can go forward.”
Life Presents Us with Challenges, and We Must Accept Them
“If you’re anxious about your problems,” Brian Christian says, “Try to realize that that’s just part of being alive. You have to learn to accept the reality that life presents you with challenges and problems. If you don’t accept that, then those problems are just going to keep piling up on you like rocks in a stream. And yet if you accept it, then new problems become an opportunity. You can learn something new about yourself. You can discover some potential new strengths.”
One time Brian Christian faced a challenge in his life that was too difficult to handle. “I realized I was so overwhelmed with things that I wanted to do and accomplish,” he remembers. “I started out as a startup entrepreneur, and I just had so many ideas and things I wanted to try out. My problem was trying to do too much at once. I was working on too many different ideas and projects at the same time.”
Realizing that his work schedule was too cluttered, he began to prioritize what projects were the most important, and which should be put on hold. After making a few changes, he started his life over again with a more streamlined schedule and eventually was a successful author of ‘The Most Human Human, which was named a Wall Street Journal bestseller, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a New Yorker favorite book of the year.’
