Self Compassion

Access to or development of the skill? That is the question.

Working in health and coaching for more than a decade, I often ask whether the person in front of me is facing an issue of access or skill development.

A simple example is a gentleman I work with—let’s call him Mr Workaholic—who is rebuilding his life after a breakup using fitness and nutrition as his foundation. He doesn’t yet have strong cooking skills, so part of the work is developing those skills. For others, it’s not skill but access: time, energy, or opportunity. In those cases, it becomes a conversation about energy management, time boxing, and stepping into the process.

A mentor of mine once asked in a lecture:

“Imagine a world where we were 20% kinder to ourselves. Imagine that.”

In my own life as a father, husband, and health professional, I’ve had to work hard on this myself. I’m still developing the skill of self-compassion. As someone who holds high standards and strong expectations, it wasn’t until a recent sporting loss that I realised I’d come further than I thought.

It might sound soft, but self-compassion changes everything. It allows us to go again. On the other side of failure, we can respond with kindness rather than the voices of judgement—“I told you so” or “what were you thinking?” Instead of staying stuck, we move forward with learning.

This work has been helpful in both binge eating and endurance running.

Binge eating is often less about food and more about self-compassion and self-trust. It can be a short-term escape from pressure, stress, or emotional load.

Endurance running is similar. We hear clichés like “just suck it up” or “no pain, no gain,” but in reality, you spend a lot of time alone with your thoughts. If those thoughts are critical, the race becomes much harder than it needs to be.

But if you bring curiosity and compassion to each setback, the journey changes.

A few principles:

Stop judging others so harshly
Because the way we judge others is often the way we end up judging ourselves.

Practice empathy
Would you speak to someone you love the way you speak to yourself?

Don’t take everything so seriously
Life improves when we stop turning everything into a high-stakes game we can’t win.

There will be more to come in this space as we build tools around self-compassion.

For now, a challenge:
Tomorrow, try seeing the best in the mirror—not the worst. You might access a part of yourself you didn’t know was there.

Yours in health
Sean Cornish

Helpful links:
https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/
https://positivepsychology.com/self-compassion-exercises-worksheets/
https://www.eatingdisorders.org.au/eating-disorders-a-z/binge-eating-disorder/