Many of us struggle continuously with our inner critic. It’s similar to having a miniature devil on your shoulder, but instead of encouraging you to do bad, It belittles and judges you for making the slightest mistake still resulting in an evil person. Just like the time when you cursed the old lady for cutting you off on the highway while out getting coffee or the time you submitted a post online and noticed too late a misspelled word resulting in you calling yourself stupid and putting yourself down. Yeah, we all go through it, and sadly the more we criticize and judge ourselves the more damaging it is to our mental health and can lead to depression & anxiety. Not to worry, because an easy fix is to simply be nicer to yourself, a basic compliment, encouragement and support to ourselves- as if you were comforting a friend or loved one who had been negative about themselves -can go a long way. Happiness is a choice you have to choose every day, to be kind to yourself, and others around you no matter how difficult things can get sometimes. With practice it gets easier and becomes a more natural to who you are.

Today I share with you a few reasons why you should always be kind to yourself. I hope you enjoy!

1. Be Kind To Yourself. Being kind to yourself helps to keep both mind and body strong and healthy.
2. It provides powerful health benefits, such as Reducing Stress Levels. Research shows that self-compassion – treating yourself with support, and understanding instead of criticism, helps decrease stress on the mind and body.
3. Lowers Your Heart Rate, When we find ourselves in a challenging or upsetting situation, our brains react in self-defense, and our hearts will start to beat rapidly, increasing heart rate can cause serious health issues.
4. Switches off the body’s threat response, (A.K.A), Fight or Flight response is also known as the acute stress response, a reaction caused by the release of hormones that prompts us to feel scared or threatened. Our brain sends signals to the body to either stay and deal with the threat or run away to safety. An unfortunate choice our ancient ancestors had to endure regularly to survive the harsh environment.
5. Opens Your Mind to all the uniqueness in the world, being open-minded is a positive quality that offers the ability to thinking critically and rationally.
6. Opens Your Heart to a feeling of pure joy, and feeling at home with yourself and your body, and finally, with peace in your mind, your heart can find love. Able to have compassion for others, to show affection and appreciation more often.
7. Keeps You Motivated! The strengths of being kind to ourselves and embracing our best versions of who we want to be, giving us the power to feel encouraged and energized enough to stay positive, motivated, and happy.
8. Boosts Self-Esteem & Confidence, self-compassion is a start to loving yourself for you the flaws and all. With a more positive attitude toward yourself, it will be easier to find your confidence as well.
9. Helps Achieve Goals As we continue to practice self-compassion, it becomes natural to see the good in all things, easy to be compassionate to yourself, and others. With having an increasingly positive attitude and a boost of motivation, it becomes a breeze to cross goals off your list. Achieving your goals is no longer anxiety-filled, and the only praise you’ll ever need is YOUR congrats from YOURSELF as a reward for accomplishing your dreams.
10. Improves Memory & Boost Creativity, replacing all the negative thoughts to positive ones delivers up all this additional space, your head is clear and free to absorb new knowledge or retrieve old.

Resources: www.aconsciousrethink.com, www.inc.com, www.thehealthy.com, www.verywellmind.com, www.thejobnetwork.com