Self compassionate letter writing

Whenever I discover something new that I think I can benefit from I like to share it. Yesterday while reading this article on self love and acceptance, I discovered something called a ‘self compassionate letter.’ I’m surprised I didn’t know anything about these because they just seem like my kind of thing. Being the active learner that I am and liking to try out new things immediately, I wrote my first ‘self compassionate letter’ last night.

You might be wondering what they are and why you should consider writing one. It’s a letter that you write to yourself showing yourself compassion in the same way you would a loved one. We tend to be very hard on ourselves when it comes to things we are not confident about or things we fail at. Some of the things we say to ourselves we would never say to someone else.

The idea is to allow yourself to accept yourself unconditionally, something many of us struggle with. It’s also a way to make you feel better about whatever it is that you’re struggling with. So in this letter you’d basically be telling yourself it’s okay to struggle with what you’re struggling with. You’ll be telling yourself it’s okay not to be perfect and to be insecure about some things. It will help you to see the problem from a different perspective. At least that’s what it did for me.

In the quest of following your dreams and succeeding in life, it’s important to not only love yourself, you also have to treat yourself with compassion. Judging yourself will only make you feel worse about yourself and instead of making your do better, it will hold you back.

I’ve been hesitant to include the letter I wrote to myself as an example because it involves something very personal but it might help someone feeling like I do so here it is:

Self compassionate letter (09 September 2017)

Dear Sibo

Before I say anything, let me start with this: You are beautiful.

I know you’ve struggled with your weight most of your life. You were told you were fat from a young age such that even when you weren’t you thought you were. You’ve tried diet after diet and joined the gym so many times. You’ve lost weight, gained it back, lost again and so on and so on. You wonder if you will ever be the weight that you’ve always wanted to be. You feel like you’ve failed because you keep wanting to eat the unhealthy food even though you know better. You feel like it’s your fault that you are the weight you are. Because you don’t like it, you sometimes feel like people are judging you.

Well my darling, it doesn’t matter what you weigh or don’t weigh because you are beautiful as you are. God would not make anyone that he does not consider beautiful. He made you in his image, which means if you don’t see beauty in yourself, you’re not seeing beauty in God. If your Dad in heaven sees you as beautiful, why won’t you believe him? You believe he loves you right? Why would he lie to you then?

That weight you’re not happy with is temporary. The weight you want to be, you’re already that. You just need to believe it before you can see it. It is what you desire and as you know, God will give you the desires of your heart. That weight will come off easily once you believe it will. Not long from now you will look in the mirror and see the woman you feel like inside. In the meantime learn to love the body you have now because it is beautiful. There are people out there who wish they had your body.

Sibo, you are the most beautiful person I know, both inside and out. That beauty comes out even more when you smile. Your smile reaches your eyes and makes them sparkle and makes those around see your beauty even more. Your beauty makes them want to smile whenever they are around you because your soul touches their soul and your joy rubs off on them.

Don’t be hard on yourself when you disappoint yourself, you are human after all. Pick up where you left off and start again until you have reached your goal weight. Every time you look in the mirror, remember that you are a beautiful child of God. It’s not only your heart that is beautiful but you also have a banging body lol.

Stay the lovely person that you are, you beautiful girl you.

I love you

Sibo.

Having written my first ‘self compassionate letter,’ I think it’s something I’m going to be doing regularly. Have you ever written one? If you haven’t you should try it and see how you feel afterwards.