What Beyonce's Essay on Body Acceptance Taught me about Self-Compassion

On any given day, if you were to glance at my phone, you would see that I almost always have a picture of Beyonce on my wallpaper. The nature of the wallpaper changes based on my mood or on my current mindset. When I took my first scary step into private practice, I had this as my wallpaper:

I had it drilled into my head that success meant you had to hustle. It meant pushing your mental, emotional, and physical capacities to reach your goal. Success, to me, meant working until burnout. I had put immense amount of pressure to put in those hours and fixate my mind on work. After all, that's what Beyonce does, right? There's no way that she became as successful as she is by simply sitting there and hoping for the best. No. She hustled and that's exactly what I wanted to do.

However, since her pregnancy and birth of her twins, I noticed a change in Queen Bey. I didn't see her in the lime light as much. Her first Coachella performance was cancelled and in following her Instagram, I saw that many of her posts were of her on vacation and taking it easy. Well duh, giving birth to twins is no easy feat, the woman deserves a break. I was waiting for her next banging performance and she delivered at Coachella. It was nothing short of spectacular. I was impressed and I couldn't wait to see footage of her On the Run II tour (side note, I was sooo upset that she wasn't making a stop in Toronto). However, in watching these performances, I noticed the lack of energy on stage and a slightly curvier Yonce. Glancing through the comment sections made me realize that I wasn't the only one that had noticed. Commenters would argue between their disappointment in her performance while others would sympathize with her body bounce-back. I'm sure Beyonce noticed this too. Why else would she dedicate an essay in Vogue about her body appearance?

"After the birth of my first child, I believed in the things society said about how my body should look. I put pressure on myself to lose all the baby weight in three months, and scheduled a small tour to assure I would do it. Looking back, that was crazy...I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth to Rumi and Sir. I was swollen from toxemia and had been on bed rest for over a month. My health and my babies’ health were in danger, so I had an emergency C-section...During my recovery, I gave myself self-love and self-care, and I embraced being curvier. I accepted what my body wanted to be."

I saw a "softer" Beyonce. One that was in no rush to bounce back and was not fixated on work. This article couldn't have come to me at a better time. On the day of the release, I was going through moments of self-criticism, thinking that my hustle was not enough. I believed that my momentum was failing and my drive wasn't strong. I was teetering between feeling like I was being too hard on myself or not hard enough. With this article, I got to thinking about self-compassion. What is it really?

In today's society, we're almost taught against self-compassion. We equate it to being weak, especially in a competitive world. Self-compassion, we believe, is feeling sorry for ourselves. But, in a competitive society, there's no room for that. Instead, we are hard on ourselves when we feel that we are just "average" instead of "above average". There's constant comparisons between ourselves and those that we perceive to be better than us. When we fall short of our expectations, we become our own worst enemies in demoralizing our abilities and talents. There goes your self-esteem. Plummeting self-esteem leaves no room for self-compassion.

Self-compassion is your way of recognizing and staying with an uncomfortable feeling. It's realizing that you feel really crummy about not reaching a goal or a standard. However, it's taking that feeling and nurturing it. Speak to that feeling (and yourself) as if it were a friend. If your friend was feeling terrible about not hitting a goal, what would you say to that friend? How could you be supportive? Once you have provided those encouraging words, recognize that at the end of the day, we're human. We are bound to make mistakes, take risks, and we don't know the future. Accept that every misstep is still a step forward in the right direction. Let go of your expectation of always having it together.

The formula is simple:

Self-Compassion = Mindfulness + Kindness + Humanity

For further information on Self-Compassion, I recommend looking into Dr. Kristin Neff, who created the above formula, and is a self-compassion researcher.

Today, this is my wallpaper:

It's a reminder that even Beyonce, as fierce as she is, practices self-compassion. She didn't get to be this successful by justhustling. There is a balance between drive and nurturance. You can't stay motivated if you're constantly breaking yourself down. You can't reach goals if you're discouraging. Don't forget that you do have a softer, kinder voice within that reminds you that you're human and that these feelings are normal. Don't let them keep you down.