Self-Compassion Isn’t Soft or Selfish. It’s Your Edge.
Self-Love
Learn to extend compassion to yourself with practical steps. Discover how self-compassion transforms care for others into a balanced, sustainable practice.
The Easy Part: Compassion for Others
I’ve always found it easy to be kind to others. I’ve never really known how not to care. Staying on the phone late at night when someone needed to talk, rearranging my own plans to help a friend in crisis, saying yes to favors even when I was exhausted.
What I had not considered until a few years ago was the practice of extending that same compassion to myself. The idea felt foreign, even uneasy. For most of my life, instead of softness, I offered myself criticism. Instead of patience, I set impossible standards.
The Cultural Blind Spot
Self-compassion felt unnatural partly because it’s something I was never taught. Like many women, I absorbed the message that my value lay in caring for others. Self-sacrifice was admired. Self-inclusion was quietly discouraged.
When we turn compassion inward, it can feel selfish or indulgent. We praise endurance, the constant yes, and meeting impossible demands without complaint. The result is a lopsided compassion that depletes us and erodes our sense of worth.
Many of us learned to prove our worth by caring for everyone else first. The giving is real and loving, yet it can ride on a quiet fear that our value depends on being endlessly available. Self-compassion interrupts that habit. It asks us to include our own needs and feelings inside the circle of care, which means we stop equating our worth to other people’s approval.
When I include myself, my energy changes. I am no longer helping others from a hole inside me; I am helping from a balanced state. I still show up and I still give, yet I do it from wholeness. My need for validation softens because I am looking after my own being rather than abandoning it.
What Is Your Heart Telling You?
It was not until later in life, after my mum passed away, that I began to see her guidance in a new light. Her family-famous phrase was simply, “What is your heart telling you?”
At the time, I did not fully understand the depth of those words. Now I see she was teaching me to honor my own needs and feelings, not merely serve others. I repeat those words to my sons so they can learn at an early age to trust their inner voice
Her voice still echoes in my mind when old patterns of self-criticism creep in. It reminds me that turning toward myself with love is not selfish. It is the path she hoped I would follow.
The Self-Compassion Edge
Living with self-compassion is not passive or permissive—it is an engaged way of moving through life. It asks for regular check-ins with what matters most, honest contact with our limits, and conscious choices that honor our needs and feelings. This is what gives us an edge.
Many of the women I work with ask, “When does self-compassion become selfish?” The fact that the question appears at all shows the conditioning. Selfishness ignores others for personal gain. Self-compassion includes yourself alongside others. When you step into the same compassion you offer everyone else, you do not shrink your care. You make it sustainable.
Including myself means I can keep helping because I am not draining myself to do it.
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Practices to Bring It Alive
Self-compassion becomes real when it is practiced in daily life. Try these practices to incorporate self-compassion in your day-to-day routine:
1. The Self-Compassionate Pause
When you notice your inner critic rising, place a hand on your heart, take a slow breath, and say quietly, “It is okay. I am doing my best.”
2. The Friend Test
Ask yourself, If my best friend felt this way, what would I say to her? Then offer those words to yourself.
3. The Grounded Yes (or No!)
Before you agree to a request, pause and bring your attention to your heart. Ask, “Is this truly what I want, or just what I think I should do?” If the honest answer is no, let yourself say it with kindness. A clear no given this way creates space for a wholehearted yes elsewhere.
My mum’s words become clearer to me with each passing year: “What is your heart telling you?”
For so long, I thought listening to my heart meant caring more for others and proving my worth through service. Only later did I realize she was pointing me to something deeper: the courage to honor my own needs and feelings with the same love I gave away.
With self-compassion we become good company to ourselves, which is why our care for others becomes clear, balanced, and sustainable.
So, pause for a moment. Place a hand on your heart. Ask yourself the question my mum asked me, the same one I now ask my sons: “What is your heart telling you?” However you respond, let the answer include you.
by Carolina Gonzalez
