Love for others includes many attributes, but compassion is probably the most important part of love.

Most spiritual practice and religious scripture emphasize attributes like humility and having love and compassion for others. Yet, very little time is spent explaining the importance of self-compassion and self-love. Although it's not emphasized, being able to "love your neighbor as yourself" indicates a need for self-love before all else. Without self-love and self-compassion, it's difficult to have love and compassion for someone else.


Love for others includes many attributes, but compassion is probably the most important part of love. Compassion involves being sensitive to someone's suffering and having a deep desire to alleviate their suffering. But in order to experience compassion, you must first consider the pain someone is going through. In other words, you must not only step into someone's shoes but also you must step into their pain and suffering. Once the pain and suffering are acknowledged and vicariously experienced, compassion includes a deep desire to help someone out of their unfortunate situation.


Self-compassion is more difficult because you must acknowledge your own humanity with a sense of respect, understanding, and kindness. It demands having patience with your own frailties and shortcomings and not falling into patterns of guilt, self-blame, name calling and destructive self-talk or behavior. It means caring enough about yourself to care for yourself and accept your imperfections. It's assuring yourself that with faith and trust in your ability to overcome adversity in life, you will overcome whatever the challenges might be.


At this point in your life, you have established patterns of behavior. By now, you are either good or not so good about the way you manage your thoughts and how you treat yourself. With self-compassion, you make it a point to handle yourself with care. You use self-talk that is gentle and encouraging rather than harsh and demeaning. Paying attention to your thoughts and feelings allows you to confront negative thoughts as they come your way. This allows you to remember your sense of humanity and know that you are not alone. Then you are able to replace negative or belittling statements like, "I'll never be good enough," with positive and encouraging ones, like, "I'm only human. I'll do better tomorrow."


Compassion for self allows you to have compassion for others. Recognizing and fighting negative thoughts requires that you become mindful of your thoughts and feelings and that you accept weaknesses as well as strengths. By accepting your human frailties and encouraging yourself when you're feeling down, you build self-compassion and strengthen self-love. If you can weather your own emotional storms and support yourself when you're feeling down, when it's no longer your turn to nurture yourself, you'll have the love and compassion to nurture someone else.