Being a Compassionate Mess

I love this term offered by the self-compassion teacher Kristen Neff, about learning to become a 'Compassionate Mess'. I was thinking about it last week while feeling a bit discombobulated and found it so helpful.

Sometimes, when life feels complicated or stressful we can feel that if we were practicing mindfulness and self-compassion 'right', or doing it 'enough' or being 'good' at it, our life would feel serenely peaceful and stress free. 

The truth is however that life is generally a bit complicated and messy. And this is the very reason that we practice mindfulness and self-compassion, to help us as we navigate through this reality of life, not to blissfully supersede it. 

As a teacher of mindfulness and compassion I can also fall into the trap of feeling a bit 'bad' when life still feels wobbly or stressful. I can question "am I practicing enough?", "who am I to teach this stuff?". Luckily self-compassion has taught me to remind myself I'm not alone in feeling like this, so many others do. It has taught me to seek small ways that I might soothe myself whether it be through the breath, kind words or reaching out to others. All of these things help to soothe and settle me. 

But there is something in this term being a Compassionate Mess that I think is so helpful. It reminds us that we can be both a bit of a mess (after all this is just the nature of being human, we are not perfect, we make mistakes, life is complicated) and compassionate. The two can go hand in hand. 

So on a train journey on Sunday (to a beautiful bluebell wood near Standen House in Sussex) I listened to a great podcast on the subject (click here for the link - it is part of the Where Is My Mind podcast). These words from Kristen Neff below really stood out to me so I wanted to share them with you this week. 
 

"What keeps me going is that we don’t need to change the contents of what’s happening. We don’t need to make things perfect. We don’t need to make ourselves perfect or make the world perfect. We do our best. We do our work. But what really is possible is you learn to identify with the compassion holding the pain.

That’s why I like this term that the goal of the practice is to become a compassionate mess. You’ll still be a mess. The world will still be a mess. But if your goal is to be a compassionate mess the emphasis is on the compassion as opposed to the mess. And compassion feels loving, it feels connected, it feels present, it feels powerful. It is motivating. Compassionate self is a very beautiful, healthy, positive mind state and the bigger the pain, the more compassion you can have.

Again it’s a matter of not identifying so much with what’s happening, with your imperfections, with the pain, and learning to identify or build your sense of self on the compassion that is holding the problems. And that actually really is possible and it’s meaningful and effective. 

It’s all about identification. If we can learn to let go of identifying with the mess, of identifying with the imperfection, of identifying with what’s happening and we learn to identify with the loving awareness that’s observing what’s happening, that’s where freedom is."
 

The term brought to mind an old favourite book from my childhood of the dog What-a-Mess. An image that for me immediately brings a feeling of love and compassion. On days when it feels hard to bring compassion to yourself you might imagine your own internal What-a-Mess within you and sense how you might still care for it within the chaos it feels it sometimes creates. 

I'm also sharing with you a short practice that you might reach into to help you cultivate a feeling of self-compassion on those messy days. I hope you find it useful.