Give Yourself Grace

“Give yourself grace and take the advice you’d give your best friend. It's so easy to be kinder to others than to own selves.”

This piece of advice came to me recently from my Aunt Jen, and I have been discerning it lately. Every week, we go through new highs, lows, and in betweens, and as humans, we tend to be very hard on ourselves sometimes. Most of the time, these highs and lows that happen to us are based on actions outside of our control. For example, we sustain an injury where we can’t walk, or perform our daily functions for a bit, or our work week has been soured by other people pouring on criticism of our work.

A lot of times, this might not happen to us, but to people we know. We’ll grab a coffee with them and they will talk through their situation, and we will hand them a piece of advice that we like. Sometimes we will even help give them an action plan to solving their problems. And this makes us feel good, because by nature, most of us want to help others to feel like we are making an impact in the world.

But why is it that when tough situations arise for us, we don’t give ourselves the same grace and advice that we would give a friend? Why are we not making an impact on our own lives when we need it most?

I don’t know about you, but I tend to be more gentle and give advice to others than to myself. Thinking about this for the last few weeks or so, it could be because we don’t want to be selfish and put ourselves first. But we only have one journey. And if we are not helping ourselves be the best version of ourselves we can be and show ourselves love, then what are we doing? 

Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with the journey. Be who you need most. Because we can’t show the world who they can be if we don’t show ourselves who we can be.