You are so hard on yourself. This is a phrase that you may have heard before. It’s usually followed up with ‘be kind to yourself; but how do you do that and ensure you achieve the success you desire? Doesn’t kindness take you off the hook?

Self-compassion is essential for building confidence. While it is understandable that high performers like yourself want you to push yourself, you cannot do it at the expense of your confidence. Confidence isn’t built out of self-loathing so you have to define what kindness is to you to actually be kind to yourself.

For some being kind is a combination of softness and a reality check.

‘If you don’t do this Sam, you will feel incapable, unsuccessful and frustrated that you didn’t get the results you want, all while not taking the action you know you can.’

For others it is allowing yourself to sit for a long while in your emotions and wait for them to be felt or even dissipate entirely. The healthiest way to be self-compassionate is to combine all of these approaches. We need to be a friend to ourselves but a true, reliable, kickass friend.

You need to kick yourself up the butt, let yourself feel emotions and have rest days, not where you get caught up in emotion alone but where you validate yourself at least. A lack of self-compassion usually results in a lack of compassion to others. When you want to help other people but you struggle to help yourself you ability to serve others is capped at your self-kindness level.

Self- compassion takes practice, especially if you’ve experienced success that comes from being hard on yourself or the people you get around you when you spend time stuck in your emotions. The most important action in self-compassion is choosing to move forward. This shows up in many ways, your ability to allow yourself to experience something different. Your ability to process your emotions but not allow yourself to get stuck there and lose rational thoughts. The ability to define for yourself when is enough and when you need to seek further help. On some level we all have a place where we need to become better at our practice of self-compassion. Perhaps you know how to move forward, to not demand positivity from yourself straight away but you don’t take the next step to actually asking for and accepting help. You may persevere until you really reach the end of your tether, when talking respectfully to and about yourself, getting back on track sooner rather than later is what you need.

When you reflect on a regular basis whether that be on a Sunday or at the end of each day, ask yourself: am I being as compassionate to myself as I possibly can? Does my self-compassion need to resemble more of an honest friend who gets you to propel yourself forward?

The more you are connected to what you need the easier it is to provide it for yourself because people do not give you more self-compassion than you give yourself. So start with you!