Power Growth and Learning Through Self-Compassion
Enhance learning and improvement through a simple model that considers both facts and feelings.
Do you constantly strive to learn and improve? Are you harsh on yourself when things don’t go well?
When we are harsh on ourselves and are not in touch with our feelings, when we don’t exhibit self-compassion, our learning is not efficient, and our efforts to improve stagger.
Recognizing my tendency to be self-critical and harsh on myself, and assessing my own experiences as well as existing models, I would like to put forth a method that facilitates personal and team learning and reflection. It is a method, I believe, that is both straightforward and efficient. It involves getting in touch with one’s feelings and relying on self-compassion to enable more effective learning and improvement processes.
My project
I recently completed a personal project — an intense online course in Data Science, which I took in the framework of my career change journey. Because finishing the course took me longer than I initially planned, I did not feel the sense of accomplishment one would expect after completing what was a challenging and professionally valuable program. So I decided to pause and do a retrospective, that is, to consider what I might do differently in the future. I have done many retrospectives in the past, but most often I focused on what seemingly went wrong and on ways to avoid it next time.
This time, however, I adopted a different approach, which resulted in great action items as well as in a strong personal sense of accomplishment.
The Approach: An Overview
At a very basic level the approach consists of three steps:
- Reality Check: Gathering the facts
- Emotional Acceptance: Emotionally accepting what happened
- Deciding on Next Steps: Action items
A straightforward template that helps follow the three steps:
Step 1 — Reality check
Learning must be based on facts. It is easier to gather the facts as the project is unfolding rather than afterwards. For example, during my project I documented the number of hours I spent on the course, the subjects I studied, major milestones, and my main activities not related to the course.
It’s important to keep the facts neutral; at this point one should not be judgmental. An example of a fact would be “The project was completed after a month”. If it’s difficult to adhere to neutrality, divide the facts into neutral, positive and negative — striving to put as many facts as possible into the neutral column.
Personally, the exercise made me realize that the perception that it took me too much time to complete the course was not fully accurate. Although the course lasted two weeks more than planned, it took two weeks less than I initially remembered. I took stock of the amazing things I have done while working on the project: taking my kids camping, visiting friends, teaching my children how to code and how to ride a bicycle. So even the extra two weeks should be viewed in a more positive light.
Step 2 — Emotional acceptance
This is perhaps the hardest, least intuitive step in the learning process.
First, we must accept and own our part in what went well. If we are too self-critical, it is easy to attribute the success to luck or circumstances. But if we recognize that our actions led to the successes, we can draw lessons for our next project. And we can also become more excited and motivated to take it on. Very little learning can be gained if our successes are falsely attributed to luck; it will not give us much of an insight for our next project.
Personally, I gave myself credit for being a great father during this summer while taking on and finishing a difficult course.
Second, we must fully accept and explain why we did our best under the circumstances and forgive ourselves for lack of perfection.
Initially, believing that I did my absolute best under the circumstances felt like letting myself off the hook, I was concerned that this approach would not facilitate learning or improvement. Today I believe the opposite is true.
Many of us work very hard, but nevertheless tend to be harsh on ourselves. Based on academic research in the field of positive psychology, such as the work of Dr. Kristin Neff on self-compassion, the best learning and action items for improvement come from self-compassion accompanied by confidence in our ability to do better in the future and by building a concrete plan to do so.
Neglecting the emotional acceptance stage and prematurely discussing action items or starting a new project while still upset over past ones, is neither productive nor motivating.
Self-blame, taking responsibility for events outside of our control, or exaggerating our role in negative developments does not facilitate learning and does not lead to great action items. It is forgiving ourselves for imperfections and understanding that some events are out of our control, and then realistically planning what can be improved — that can produce the most valuable learnings and action items.
The pace in which I completed the Data Science course was appropriate for me. It allowed me to proceed with confidence as I grappled with unfamiliar material. I also built amazing Data Science models that were not required by the course. That was both fun and contributed to my understanding of the subject. I also forgave myself for not doing certain activities with the kids during that summer, accepting that I did my best in juggling between family commitments and the course.
Step 3 — Action Items
Once the first two steps are completed it is time to set action items. We would also be able to look at what did not go well, plan better for things outside of our control, and realistically decide on a few areas for self-improvement in future projects. Setting action items only after the reality check and the acceptance phase can ensure that in future projects we will be able to utilize our strengths — which have likely enabled past successes — even more effectively.
Following this process, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I recognized that I learned a lot, did my best, and helped my kids have a great summer. Looking back, I would not do things very differently: I wouldn’t study more hours at the expense of time with my family; I wouldn’t hurry through the contents in order to finish the course earlier, which would’ve meant less learning and less fun. My main lesson is that while planning is important, the plan has to be realistic. Furthermore, I learned that as long as I am doing my best and continuously striving to learn and improve, I should not take it hard if and when things don’t unfold exactly as planned.
I plan to use this model in the future, and I hope it can help you learn and improve as an individual or as a team, in a large or a small project — by basing your learning on facts as well as emotions and self-compassion.

