Kristin Neff, one of the world's leading experts in self-compassion, defines self-compassion as "treating ourselves kindly when we feel inadequate... with kindness and concern, like we would treat a friend. In contrast, self-esteem is a judgment on self-worth." Self-compassion sounds like a relatively simple concept.

According to Psychologist Rami Nijjar, one to the reasons for this is because society has conditioned us to focus on self-esteem, rather than self-compassion. "We've burnt ourselves out in becoming more goal-driven and individualistic," says Nijjar, which is what focusing on self-esteem tends to encourage. "With self-esteem, we got into a way of living where we constantly push ourselves outside of our comfort zones."

Neff says that many people worry that self-compassion will make them lazy and complacent, but in fact, it can actually increase motivation. Think about the way that we motivate children, she says, "As a culture, we thought that to get children to do well, we have to use harsh corporal punishment. Now we know through the research that if we use encouragement... they have more likelihood of succeeding. If we threaten them, they have fear of failure and get performance anxiety, which undermines their ability to achieve." Says Neff, "When people connect to what's human about them and are able to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, they're able to take care of their health better, they're able to motivate themselves more long-term."

In addition to the belife that being kind toward yourself can lead to laziness, Nijjar says there's often a lot of shame associated with self-care and practicing self-compassion. People often ask themseves, "Am i being self-indulgent?" The research says otherwise. Because self-compassion helps us with how we internalize strees inthe world, we tend to be better equipped to deal with challenging stituations, says Nijjar. This is gives us more emotional energy to have better relationships with others.