Brené Brown is a New York Times bestselling author and a professor at The University of Houston. Her research on courage, shame, and empathy has made her a household name, and her TED Talk on vulnerability has been viewed almost 60 million times.
In a recent episode of Brown's popular podcast "Unlocking Us" she talks with sisters Tembi and Attica Locke who co-wrote the new Netflix show "From Scratch" which is based on Tembi's memoir.
The show follows an American studying abroad in Italy where she falls in love with a Sicilian chef who ends up being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Tembi's memoir and the show detail how she takes care of him — and herself — until his death.
During the interview, Brown and the Locke sisters discuss how to be mentally tough in impossible situations.
"The core of mental toughness is actually self-compassion," Brown said. "People who are mentally tough stay mentally tough because they don't slip easily into shame or self-criticism or self-loathing."
The science backs this up: When you feel like you're not performing at your best, self-criticism makes you more emotional and unable to learn from your mistakes, according to research from Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Self-compassion, though, makes you more resilient.
"From Scratch," Brown says, is a reminder that vulnerability is a tool that can make us stronger even in the toughest circumstances.
"What makes us vulnerable makes us beautiful and our vulnerability is our primary source of strength and you don't see that very often," she says.
3 habits for practicing self-compassion
Self-criticism will turn failure into despair, according to Stanford research. But self-compassion will help you view disappointment as a learning opportunity and a chance to improve your performance in the future.
Self-compassion can also lead to a decrease in stress.
Practicing self-compassion involves altering your thought process in three ways:
- Be kind to yourself. Don't talk to yourself in a way that you wouldn't talk to a friend
- Understand that you aren't alone. Everyone makes mistakes and is still deserving of empathy
- Validate your feelings without piling on and making yourself feel worse
If you're finding this hard to do in real-time, you can implement some actionable habits such as:
- Writing a letter to yourself in the way a compassionate friend would write a letter to you. Then, reading it back to yourself
- Writing down self-critical words that come to mind and asking yourself if you'd say these to a friend
- Developing a mantra that you can repeat to yourself when you start to get self-critical
- Meditating to relax and let go of critical thoughts
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