It's mid-January, which means some of you out there may have already stumbled a little bit out of the gate on those New Year's resolutions. If you're anything like me, you know what comes after that. Self-criticism, self-doubt, frustration. "You couldn't do it." "Here's another thing you failed at." "You just aren't good enough."

It's an inevitable feature of our minds. We think we should be able to accomplish something, but the second we face an obstacle in getting there, we descend into a spiral of self-condemnation. This feeling makes any action to achieve our goals even more difficult, as we're now operating under the assumption that we don't have what it takes.

The way out of this cycle is self-compassion, and it's impossible to talk about the modern movement for self-compassion without talking about Kristen Neff.

Neff is an associate professor in the Educational Psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin. She's also one of the world's foremost scholars on self-compassion. (Her website, not surprisingly, is self-compassion.org.) She believes extending ourselves more compassion is the key to not only improving our own lives, but righting some of the wrongs in our society.

I'd recommend taking 19 minutes to watch her 2013 TEDx talk, "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self-Compassion." (There's some distracting whispering near the beginning, but that goes away a minute or so in.)

She explains that, in our society, we've been taught from a very young age the importance of having high self-esteem. It's always been considered a sign of good, strong mental health. But high self-esteem can backfire. If we're all taught that we have to be special and "above average," what happens when we fail? What happens when we encounter problems?

There are a few different ways the mind can go at this point. Some people feel the need to do things to prove that they are superior to others, to bully people to make themselves feel special, to deny that they could ever do anything wrong. (I can't think of any prominent individual who fits this description, can you?) For years, this kind of behavior has led social psychologists to insist that we're in a narcissism epidemic.

The other route is self-criticism. We berate ourselves for our failures and can fall into bouts of depression and anxiety. If the world is about proving you're better than other people and you find yourself unable to do so, the only logical explanation is that you are the problem. This is where high self-esteem can get us into real trouble. It's completely contingent upon success, so what happens when success is hard to find?

Self-compassion, on the other hand, is a way of dealing with the inevitable failures that show up in life. It's a way of acknowledging that things didn't turn out how we wanted, but that we specifically are not the problem. Here's a quote from Neff's TEDx talk:

"Self-compassion is not a way of judging ourselves positively. Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all."

Fortunately, showing ourselves a little bit of love and consideration isn't terribly difficult. It just takes practice. Here are the three steps Neff suggests for getting there.

1. Self-kindness. This involves simply talking to ourselves the way we would a friend with the same problem. When we do this, we recognize that our negative self-talk is destructive; we're talking to ourselves in a way we would never speak to someone else.
2. Common humanity. Understand and accept that imperfections are a part of life. Nobody is without flaw and nobody has only ever achieved success. When we realize we are all more alike than different and aren't in direct competition with every other person on the planet, that pressure to be "special" is alleviated.
3. Mindfulness. Here's where meditation comes in. We can be with what is in the present moment. We can acknowledge and validate our suffering in order to provide compassion.

We shouldn't be surprised at how difficult this is to do. For most of our lives, we're given examples of how intense, focused criticism gets the job done. We glorify coaches who are tough on their players to achieve better performance and we heap praise on people who lash out at their subordinates over mistakes.

But, research has shown that extensive criticism is ineffective for achieving better performance in the long run. There may be short-term benefits (possibly based on simple regression to the mean), but over time relentless criticism leads to people feeling beaten down, ineffective, and unmotivated.

Our bodies are programmed from birth to respond to warmth, soft voices, and gentle contact. Self-criticism creates a fear response – useful for a short-term task (like running away from a predator) but counterproductive for stronger, long-term motivation.

Even if you don't always meditate on self-compassion, there are ways to give yourself a little self-love boost every day. Dan Harris put forth some simple steps earlier this month on "Good Morning America," a variation of Neff's steps above.

1. Recognize you're suffering and being self-critical.
2. Recognize that others are suffering as well; you're not alone.
3. Send yourself the kindness and love you deserve.

For those who have a little bit more time, there are loving-kindness meditations available online from Kristen Neff, where she asks us to generate an image of someone who's been unconditionally kind to us. As in other loving-kindness meditations, we express feelings of warmth and compassion for this person, hoping that they are free from suffering. This can be effortless when we are thinking about others we care about, which then makes it easier to extend that same love and compassion to ourselves.