A few weeks ago I gave a talk to a room of pastors. About ten minutes in, I lost my place. I shuffled my notes, repeated a point I had already made, and told a story that was supposed to land and instead just sat there. Nobody walked out. A few people thanked me afterward. And yet I drove home replaying it, and the voice in my head was merciless. You've done this for thirty years. How do you still do that? They'll remember the stumble, not the message.
My wife asked me over dinner how it went. I started to recite the commentary running in my head, and she put her fork down and said, "Dave, if a friend told you he'd done that, what would you say to him?" I knew the answer immediately. I would have said, "That happens to everyone. You've given a hundred good talks. Let it go." I would never, in any circumstance, have spoken to a friend the way I had spoken to myself for three hours.
The Harshness I Mistook for Discipline
I come from a world that prizes self-discipline. Most of the men and women I coach do as well. We believe, often without examining it, that the inner critic is what keeps us sharp. If we stop berating ourselves, we imagine, we will go soft. So we keep the whip handy.
The research says otherwise. Kristin Neff, a psychologist at the University of Texas, began studying self-compassion in the early 2000s and has described it as having three parts: self-kindness instead of self-judgment, a sense of common humanity instead of isolation, and mindfulness instead of over-identification with the pain. The common humanity piece is the one that moved me. When I fail, my mind tells me I am uniquely deficient. In truth, every speaker in history has lost his place.
And the fear that self-compassion breeds laziness has been tested. In a 2012 study by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, participants who were induced to respond to a failure with self-compassion were more motivated to improve and spent more time studying afterward than those who were given a self-esteem boost or no intervention. Harsh self-criticism, by contrast, tends to be linked with procrastination, anxiety, and avoidance. A person who is afraid of his own judgment hides from his mistakes. A person who is kind to himself can look at them.
"As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." — Psalm 103:13-14
What the Desert Taught Me About Judging Myself
There is a story from the Desert Fathers that I return to often. A brother in a monastery had committed a fault, and the elders gathered to judge him. They sent for Abba Moses, and he hesitated. Finally he came, carrying a leaking basket of sand on his back. When they asked him why, he said, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I have come to judge the sins of another."
I used to read that story as a rebuke to judging others. Now I read it as a rebuke to the courtroom I keep inside. The apostle Paul is plain that there is no condemnation for those in Christ (Romans 8:1). If God has set down the gavel, who am I to keep picking it up?
Notice what the tradition does not say. It does not say that failure does not matter. The desert monks practiced rigorous confession and repentance. But repentance and self-contempt are different things. One turns toward God and toward repair. The other turns inward and sinks.
The Break I Now Take
Neff and her colleague Christopher Germer developed a short practice they call the self-compassion break, and I have adapted it for my own use. It takes less than five minutes and has three steps that correspond to the three parts. I name what is happening: "This is a moment of real disappointment." I remind myself I am not alone: "Other people feel this. Every speaker I know has had a day like this." And I speak a kindness to myself, often with a hand on my chest, which sounds silly until you try it: "May I be gentle with myself. May I give myself what I need."
The first time, I felt foolish. By the third time, something in my body softened. Researchers have linked soothing touch and caring words to activity in the body's calming systems, and whatever the mechanism, I can report the effect: my shoulders drop and my breathing slows. Then, and only then, can I ask the useful question, which is, "What would I do differently next time?"
Last week I tried it again after a hard conversation with my son, and it worked. Not because the conversation went better in memory, but because I could think about it without flinching. The full practice is on the tools page as The Self-Compassion Break.
If you carry trauma, depression, or a critical voice that feels overwhelming, a counselor can help in ways a short practice cannot. Please talk to one.
Your Practical Takeaway
The next time you catch yourself in a loop of self-criticism, stop and ask, "What would I say to a friend who did this?" Then say exactly that to yourself, out loud if you can. Do it once this week with something small. What would change in your work and your marriage if you spoke to yourself the way God speaks to you?