Last week, I was reminded of the importance of kindness towards our past selves in a most personal way. My Aunt Shirley, a cherished family member, passed away due to COVID-19. Amidst this loss, a family photo surfaced - a snapshot capturing Shirley and my father in their younger days. This image above of two people whose lives have now been lived sparked a memory in me.

When I was in Year 12, I found some Year 12 mathematics textbooks at home, and they weren’t mine. When I asked Mum, she told me that Dad was studying Year 12 at night school and that I was not to talk about it to him. My reaction (be kind, I was only 16 and with the lack of empathy of a teenager) was to be embarrassed.

At the time of my embarrassment, I was unaware of the complexity of circumstances that had led my father to decide to undertake Year 12 as an adult and to hide it from everybody. I didn’t understand how a 14-year-old boy, who had to leave both home and school to move to the city and earn a living, might feel. I didn’t understand how this might have shaped his identity. Yet now it fills me with admiration. His quest for knowledge, despite his formal education being cut short, is a narrative of perseverance and self-improvement.

When you look back at your earlier self, the best course of action is to smile and notice how far you’ve come.

For most people, as we go through life, we start to see things in more complex ways. However, it's essential to remember that our younger selves did the best they could with what they knew and the skills they possessed at the time. Being kind to our younger self means looking back and understanding that we were still learning and growing. It's like giving a friendly nod to who we were, knowing that every step we took helped us to become who we are today.

Are you a heckler or a supporter from the balcony?

Imagine your life journey as a series of interconnected balconies, each one situated above the other. According to Kegan's theory of adult development, as you ascend from one balcony to the next, your view of the world expands and becomes more intricate. Being kind to your younger self is like looking down from your current balcony to the ones below. When you were on those lower balconies, your view was more limited; you could only see a certain distance from that level.

Each balcony you've stood on played a crucial role, allowing you to understand and experience the world from that height. Now, from a higher balcony, you have a broader and deeper perspective, but you recognise and value the balconies below for providing the foundation and experiences that have lifted you to where you are now. Just as we move up to higher balconies in life, we need each stage of understanding and experience to reach the fuller understanding we have today.

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It is important to treat oneself with the same kindness, understanding, and love that we often extend to others. Self-compassion is a vital aspect of our overall well-being and mental health.

1. "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." – Buddha

2. "The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely." – Carl Jung

3. "Loving yourself isn’t vanity. It’s sanity." – Katrina Mayer

4. "Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love." – Brené Brown

5. "You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens." – Louise L. Hay

6. "Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others." – Christopher Germer

7. "The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself." – Mark Twain

8. "Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do." – Brené Brown