According to Neff, there are three main components of self-compassion: mindfulness, kindness, and a sense of common humanity. And when you incorporate those three components into your everyday life, it can have remarkable effects. Take this 2010 study for example: When participants wrote a letter to themselves (a paragraph of mindfulness, a paragraph of common humanity, and a paragraph of kind words) once a day for a total of seven days, they had a significant decrease in depression for three months and an increase in happiness for six months.
“[It’s] something as little as writing a letter to yourself,” Neff adds. “Self-compassion is really a mindset. And once you cultivate that mindset, things immediately start to shift.” In the case of the above research study, those positive shifts may be pretty long-term.
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