I personally believe that gratitude and self-compassion are key pillars in life, coupled with hard work and fun. Both authors of this book are well-known for their work on self-compassion. This workbook can take people to inner places of love that they never knew were there. You can try to do this workbook by yourself or contact a therapist to help you with it. The results will be life-changing.

Excerpts:

“As Rumi said, ‘our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it’. We have all built barriers to love. We’ve had to in order to protect ourselves from the harsh realities of living a human life. But there is another way to feel safe and protected. When we are mindful of our struggles, and respond to ourselves with compassion, kindness, and support in times of difficulty, things start to change. We can learn to embrace ourselves and our lives, despite inner and outer imperfections, and provide ourselves wit the strength needed to thrive. An explosion of research into self-compassion over the last decade has shown its benefits for well-being. Individuals who are more self-compasionate tend to have greater happiness, life satisfaction, and motivation, better relationships and physical health, and less anxiety and depression. They also have the resilience needed to cope with stressful life events such as divorce, health crises, academic failure, even combat trauma. When we struggle, it is hard to be mindful toward what is occurring. We think there is something wrong with us. In the blink of an eye, we can go from “I do not like this feeling” to “I am bad”. That’s where self-compassion comes in. We need to comfort and soothe ourselves for how hard it is to be a human being before we can relate to our lives in a more mindful way. Self-compassion is about learning to embrace ourselves and our imperfections and finding the resilience to thrive.”