Self-compassion is key when it comes to learning, growing, improving and trusting yourself- don't dwell on your mistakes, but instead turn them into kind, positive, teachable lessons.

Test out four questions that can help you to foster self-compassion in moments when you make a mistake. Based on fascinating research by Serena Chen.

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Hello happiness seekers.

I'm work psychologist Claudia Mitura and I'm on a journey to test drive and explore some of the best happiness hacks from leading experts around the globe, implement them and share what I've learned.

In the latest episode of Trust and Happiness, I spoke with Laura Cruz about building self trust and gaining a trust of other people around you so that you can be leaping into unknown and following your dreams.

And one of the very important principles of building self trust is actually showing yourself some self compassion.

So when we respond to challenges in life with self compassion, kindness and understanding, we are able to turn the mistakes much quicker into those teachable moments.

And when we do that, we then strengthen our self belief and increase our self trust because we think to ourselves, you know what, I can deal with this.

I trust myself that I will be kind to myself and I'll support myself through that challenging journey and everything will be fine.

And I try to manage it as best as I can.

And even though I think counterintuitively, we believe that if we dwell on our mistakes, really get to the bottom of them, really focus on shortcomings, overanalyze some of the mistakes or shortcomings that we have, that we will be more successful because we will know specifically why they happen and how to progress from them.

And for very long time I definitely was thinking like that.

But we know that from some fantastic research that we are actually most likely to improve our performance, our behavior, our mindset in the future if we are able to respond to the shortcomings with self compassion, kindness and understanding because we are more willing to take an action much quicker.

The feeling of self compassion means in practice that we are less judgmental about our failures.

We understand that making mistakes is in human nature.

We feel bad, guilty, yes, we still have those emotions, but we are not overpowered by them because the self compassion is helping us to deal with them and we are willing to take action and learn quicker.

So in this quick episode I'm proposing four questions based on the fantastic research by professor of psychology Serena Chen that can help us to their self compassion in the moments of shortcomings.

So we're going to start with something maybe unpleasant to think of, but hopefully we're going to experience this self compassion and we're going to therefore increase our level of self trust.

So think about something that happened last week that maybe didn't go according to the plan, a mistake that you made, think about maybe a behavior action that you have taken and you think, you know what, that wasn't actually my Great test.

Think about some shortcomings that you, you know, you may be not really happy about yourself in certain aspects.

So for me, again, personal example and a quite interesting one because it shows you how easily we criticize ourselves even in the moments and that maybe don't really matter that much.

So I have a situation last week that I was coming back from work and I was traveling between York in London in United Kingdom and I needed to take a train home.

And it was after a quite long day of training delivery and had a fantastic time with my colleagues.

But then I was rushing, literally running onto the station to catch the train that I booked.

And once I jumped in on it, the literally train start moving and I have realized that I booked the longer train, okay, home, which means that instead of traveling for one hour and a bit, I'll be staying on the train for two hours and 20 minutes.

And you know, it's now feels very kind of okay, so what?

But in that moment, being tired, right, I rushed for that longer train and I feel so frustrated with myself that I made that mistake.

How on earth I've actually managed to book a ticket for the longest train that there is between York and London.

And here I am now be stuck there till the evening.

And I just felt so angry with myself.

So the four questions that Serena Chen proposes and that really helped me to respond to my shortcoming in that moment and the mistake with self compassion were the following.

So number one, think about your example and think about this question.

Am I being kind and understanding to myself?

So for me that answer was absolutely not.

I was fuming with myself.

I was thinking, oh my God, I'm an idiot.

How come I booked the wrong train?

Oh my God, I have so much things to do.

I just want to go home, I just want to go to bed.

And I'm stuck now on this train and there is no way I can swap that train because it's a long train, long connection, and I just need to stay here till I reach home.

Two, do I acknowledge shortcomings and failure as experiences shared by everyone?

No, again.

Because you know what I was thinking that I'm the only idiot on this planet by doing this, but actually stopping and understanding that you know what?

I had a really successful day.

And yes, I booked a wrong ticket, but it can happen to anyone.

And in fact what really helped me was that the person next to me was on the train and had a ticket for the next day for that train and was actually arguing with the conductor that it's already Wednesday and Conductor was saying, no, no, it's already Tuesday and you have a ticket bought for Wednesday.

So that made me feel better thinking, yes, we humans make mistakes.

3Am I keeping my negative feelings in perspective?

No, I wasn't.

I was really over exaggerating the fact that I'm on the longer train.

Yes, unfortunately I there's not much I can do now.

I can simply make that journey the most positive journey I can.

You know, I did a little bit of work, I did a little bit of writing for the podcast, I read a bit of book.

Yeah, it was a little bit longer than expected.

But you know what, I had time to myself on the train to deal with certain things.

I wanted to deal for a little bit longer.

And 4 what am I willing to learn?

And for me the learning there was that if an annoying situation can be turning something positive and in the future, yes, I'm definitely going to double check what train I'm booking.

But the most important thing is I really don't need at the end of a very good and successful day to be bollocking myself inside that I haven't done something.

And actually responding with self compassion allowed me to just relax and actually enjoy that 2 hours and 20 minute journey rather than be fuming with myself that I'm on the wrong train that is taking so much longer than it should be.

So hopefully you enjoyed this quick exercise and hopefully you can see how this can help you and guide you to foster that self compassion and hopefully build that self trust.

Because you know what, next time I trust myself that would be a bit kinder to myself.

And actually next time I know I can trust myself to double check the process of booking that ticket.

And I know that this is a very simple example, but I just thought that, you know what if I'm criticizing myself in such a simple moment, what about the bigger self criticism when we really making really important decisions in life, how important then is thinking about that self compassion when things go really not according to the plan?

Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed this quick episode with another practical exercise.

If you have any feedback please please drop me a message.

I would love to hear from you.

And as always visit anthappiness co.uk where you can find so much more information about happiness and listen to other related topic.

For now, I dare you to be happy.

Bye.