Quotes About Self-compassion

It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.

What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures. When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred.

In the West we tend to think of compassion as a form of charity, but I share Lao-tzu's view that compassion for all beings—not least of all oneself—is the key to breaking down barriers among people.

Don't be against yourself. There's enough cruelty in the world as it is. Don't make things worse by scapegoating yourself.

We need to love ourselves in order to feel good about who we are. This love is called self-esteem.

It's hard being in the body of someone you don't like, because you still have to respect it.

My God, woman! Your life was destroyed. You've rebuilt a new one, a deeply productive one, without ever surrendering. You're entitled to not be strong about everything every instant. And you have the right to admit that it hurts, and that things frighten you.

I never abused anybody but myself.

I think I beat myself up more than anyone else.

Don't strive for love, be it.

Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.

El primer paso para llegar a vencer la vergüenza consiste en aceptar lo que no podemos cambiar.

We all make mistakes, don't we? But if you can't forgive yourself, you'll always be an exile in your own life.

Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clapping myself. Or clapping for myself. I start to giggle. All the voices are receding now. I am no longer filled with rage or disappointment. I clap and clap and simply cannot stop.

There is no picturesque version of what self-care looks like; it's different for every person who wants to practice it.

you need to accept exactly where you are in relationship to your Higher Power and drop the idea that you have to be perfect before you can let God in. The irony is that God is sitting on the doorstep waiting while you think you have to clean house. In reality, He doesn't care if your house is dirty; He wants to help you clean things up. He's calling through the door, "If you let me in, I'll help you vacuum, honey!" He wants to uplift your life.

One thing that discovering my own history had taught me is that we must learn not to whip ourselves for the failures of others. When a mother cannot love and protect her children, it is not the children who are defective.

You might have compassion fatigue, letting everyone dump on you all day. I bet you need a break—everyone else's trauma is getting to you. There's only so much a person can take in.

Your feelings don't have to mesh with what you think they should be," he explained. "They'll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them because they hold important clues.

we talk to ourselves more than we'll talk to any other person over the course of our lives but that our words aren't always kind or true or helpful—or even respectful. Most of what we say to ourselves we'd never say to people we love or care about, like our friends or children.

If we have a choice between believing one of two things, both of which we have evidence for -- I'm unlovable, I'm lovable - often we choose the one that makes us feel bad. Why do we keep our radios tuned to the same static-ridden stations (the everyone's-life-is-better-than-mine, the I-can't-trust-people station, the nothing-works-out-for-me station) instead of moving the dial up or down? Change the station. Walk around the bars. Who's stopping us but ourselves?

In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him

we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder work of forgiving ourselves.