Quotes About Self-compassion

The stubbornness I had as a child has been transmitted into perseverance. I can let go but I don't give up. I don't beat myself up about negative things.

I don't like getting older, but there's nothing I can do. Hitting 60 wasn't great, but I think I was lucky in not being that beautiful; it can be really cruel on people who have been stunning.

Not respecting yourself, is the same as committing suicide at a slow rate.

We need to pick ourselves up out of the relapse, give ourselves a gentle, firm, kind talking to, and move on. Beating ourselves up and dwelling on the past keeps us stuck and overfocused on ourselves.

When (because there is no "if" about this) you are meditating and suddenly find yourself mixing up a batch of brownies or deciding whether to eat Chinese or Italian tonight, just realize that you have strayed off. Then, without judging yourself a "bad" meditator, gently return your awareness to your breath.

Please don't nag yourself with thoughts of failure. Do not set goals far beyond your capacity to achieve. Simply do what you can do, in the best way you know, and the Lord will accept of your effort.

Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

I've always very earnestly tried to do my best, so I just have to trust that and forgive myself for being fallible.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

I, who have never willfully pained another, have no business to pain myself.

Don't be hard on yourself. And take as many chances, risks, as you can.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way. One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, where you are, what you are. This is why we talk so much about making friends with ourselves, because, for some reason or other, we don't feel that kind of satisfaction in a full and complete way.

Attention to the present moment. We make the choice, moment by moment, to be fully here. Attending to our present-moment mind and body is a way of being tender toward self, toward other, and toward the world. This quality of attention is inherent in our ability to love.

In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves.

If you are interested in these teachings, then you have to accept the fact that you're never going to get it all together." It was a shocking statement to me. He said with a lot of clarity, "You are never going to get it all together, you're never going to get your act together, fully, completely. You're never going to get all the little loose ends tied up.

The irony is that what we most want to avoid in our lives is crucial to awakening bodhichitta. These juicy emotional spots are where a warrior gains wisdom and compassion. Of course, we'll want to get out of those spots far more often than we'll want to stay. That's why self-compassion and courage are vital. Without loving-kindness, staying with pain is just warfare.

The joy comes from not giving up on ourselves, from mindfully sticking with ourselves and beginning to experience our great warrior spirit.

We start with ourselves. We make ourselves right or we make ourselves wrong, every day, every week, every month and year of our lives. We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good. We don't want to be wrong because then we'll feel bad. But we could be more compassionate toward all these parts of ourselves.

It's as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla. The mirror's there; it's showing you, and what you see looks bad. You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla. That's being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what's happening or push it away.

When anything difficult arises—any kind of conflict, any notion of unworthiness, anything that feels distasteful, embarrassing, or painful—instead of trying to get rid of it, we breathe it in. The three poisons are passion (this includes craving or addiction), aggression, and ignorance (which includes denial or the tendency to shut down and close out). We would usually think of these poisons as something bad, something to

This is called maitri—developing loving-kindness and an unconditional friendship with ourselves.

Without loving-kindness for ourselves it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.

Some of us can accept others right where they are a lot more easily than we can accept ourselves. We feel that compassion is reserved for someone else, and it never occurs to us to feel it for ourselves.

As adults, we can begin to cultivate a sense of loving-kindness for ourselves—by ourselves, for ourselves.