Be kind to yourself

Richard Rohr’s new book Just This is a short and useful title designed to help shift our way of thinking. He writes that we can transform our pain and challenging experiences through our perspective. Just This acknowledges that we all deal with disappointments. Rohr suggests that reframing our thinking is often the best way to manage hurt and failure. 

We all have dialogue and noise in our heads that creates meaning out of everything we experience. Someone looked at us the wrong way on the bus this morning. A stranger shouted at us from across the street. Our colleague wasn’t in the nicest mood and took it out on us. A normally supportive friend just didn’t have time for us today.

We can often go to the most negative places when these things happen, but we have a choice to challenge what might immediately come to mind and look at things differently. We can acknowledge our feelings of hurt and choose to look at these happenings in a more empathic way, which promotes kindness to others and more kindness to ourselves.

We can shift our thinking when we recognize negative thought patterns. Rohr addresses the way we can talk to ourselves – especially when bad things happen – and asks us to consider the experiences differently. He writes with compassion, honesty, and wisdom.

Rohr has written a number of books, including Falling Upward and his forthcoming A Spring Within Us. His meditations on life and being human remind us of something we can often lose sight off – we don’t achieve success or happiness by being perfect or never failing. We only learn through the failures we make how we can be better next time.

We all struggle. We all hurt. We all fail. We all make mistakes.

Let’s be kinder to ourselves.