10 Gentle Reminders For Everyone Who Is Too Hard On Themselves

1. You’re not a bad person for caring about yourself. You’re not a bad person for wanting to be happy. You’re sure as hell not a bad person for putting yourself first. And if someone tries to make you seem like you are for those things, they aren’t the best person themselves.

2. Don’t forget to celebrate your small victories. You are allowed to feel proud of yourself for things that might seem silly to other people, like cleaning your room or helping an old man to cross the street or finishing a book. You deserve to feel proud for your accomplishments.

3. It is alright to stay home and have a self care day if you’re overwhelmed with your current situation. You don’t have to be feeling down to give yourself permission to spend the night home alone with that book you’ve been dying to read. You don’t have to earn that piece of chocolate with a hard day at work. You don’t have to run yourself ragged before you deserve a bubble bath. You don’t need to wait for a disaster to be kind to yourself.

4. You will make mistakes, you will act irrationally. You will commit some wrongs that cannot be fully righted. People will dislike you and misunderstand you for all sorts of reasons. None of these make you a bad person. All you can do is try your best to be kind and just to people, grow and learn.

5. Just because you are struggling does not mean you are failing.

6. People don’t notice your mistakes as much as you think.

7. Not everyone you encounter in your life is a lesson. Not everyone caused you pain just so you could heal yourself. Not every pain you feel is part of a procedure for your new learnings. Stop forgiving people for hurting you because you think they helped you grow. You were the one made yourself grow. You were the one who inverted the pain to motivate you better in your life. You put all your pieces back in place, put your heart back inside your broken ribs and stitched your own wounds. It was all you. Stop giving people who hurt you credit for things they do not deserve.

8. This may be cliché, but love isn’t possession.

9. You are not defined by how someone else perceives you. Your worth does not come from how someone else reacts to you. You are not society’s perception of you. You are your own person and are lovable just as you are.

10. You don’t have to be whole at all. You can be hurt, you might be broken. You have every right to be tired; and shattered in tiny little pieces. You don’t have to pretend. You do not need to be whole. Just learn to be comfortable with every fragment of yourself.