Sublime

The Buddha said that once we realize that we are the closest and most precious person on Earth to ourselves, we will stop treating ourselves as an enemy.

When we have compassion for ourselves, our internal negative dialogue goes away.

Research shows that self-compassionate people not only have greater self-confidence, but they are less likely to fear failure and are more likely to try again when they do fail, and to persist in their efforts to keep learning.

It’s quite sufficient a challenge to seek to follow what the philosopher Iddo Landau calls the ‘reverse golden rule’ – that is, not treating yourself in punishing and poisonous ways in which you’d never dream of treating someone else.

When we are not living in alignment with our core values, we suffer. An important act of self-compassion, therefore, is to identify our values, figure out whether we are living in accord with them, and try to give ourselves what we need. If

The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga by Marvin Levine,

2. A Caring Exercise