Cheers to you and the New Year. I hope that the holidays treated you well and that you’ve been getting after all your New Year’s resolutions. If you’re slowly losing steam on your resolutions or if you’ve already given up on them altogether, you’re not alone. Studies show that only 9% of people attain their New Year’s resolutions.

As I navigate 2019, one of my resolutions is to have self-compassion. I began drafting this post last year, and I have been kicking myself for not sharing it with you, my amazing readers, sooner. But then I realized that I needed to stop punishing myself and instead have more compassion for myself.

At the end of last year, I spent 3 months testing my hypothesis that balancing self-care with a demanding job is possible. Testing this hypothesis limited the time that I had to write a blog post (although I did write about my experiences in this Campaigns & Elections piece). I felt guilty about not writing a blog post sooner… until I received my latest Mindful magazine with the headline Self-Compassion: Why Being Kind to Yourself is the Most Powerful Thing You Can Do. Then I remembered that I had simply practiced what I preach: I prioritized my self-care over a blog post when I didn’t have time to do both.

Here are 3 easy ways to bring self-compassion into 2019:

1. Add self-compassion to your list of resolutions and read this article to get started.
2. Take a self-compassion break, using this step-by-step guide, to resolve a situation you may be facing today.
3. The next time that you catch yourself beating yourself up, interrupt your negative self-talk. Watch this scene from Cool Runnings, look in the mirror, and repeat.

Successfully integrating self-care into our lives is possible only when we have compassion for ourselves when we fall short. Self-compassion enables us to keep moving forward even when times are tough. The world is hard enough––to need to be on your own back. Developing greater compassion for ourselves might just enable us to have greater compassion for others too.

I look forward to hearing from you in 2019.

Jayson