Ep #148: Self-Compassion vs. Self-Sabotage: Are You Being Too Nice to Yourself?

Strong is a Mindset with Carrie Holland | Self-Compassion vs. Self-Sabotage: Are You Being Too Nice to Yourself?
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Have you been hiding behind self-compassion as a way to avoid discomfort? Many of us use “being kind to myself” as an excuse to bail on our own goals and commitments. But this isn’t true self-compassion—it’s self-sabotage in disguise.

Real kindness isn’t letting yourself off the hook every time things get hard. It’s that voice that says, “I know this is difficult, and I know you can do it anyway.” True self-compassion challenges you to grow, allows you to see where you’re capable of more, and keeps you from pretending you can’t do it. It’s honest, and sometimes that honesty isn’t comfortable.

If you’re repeatedly not following through on your commitments under the guise of being gentle with yourself, and you’re not making progress as a result, we need to have an honest conversation about what self-compassion actually means and how to practice it in a way that moves you forward instead of keeping you stuck.


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What You Will Discover:

  • How to recognize burnout even when you’re still high-functioning and productive.
  • Why the same strategies that work in your career often fail when applied to self-care.
  • The power of shifting from an identity of “I’m not consistent” to “I’m someone who takes care of herself.”
  • How to replace limiting beliefs with supportive thoughts that actually motivate action.
  • Why small, gentle actions create more lasting change than intense, all-or-nothing approaches.
  • How to build a self-care practice that feels like relief instead of another job on your to-do list.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #148. If you think you’re being kind to yourself, but you’re also stuck, let’s talk about it.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland.

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? We are going to talk about being too nice to yourself. And so, before I go any further, hang on, because I need to put something out there right from the start. If you feel defensive about that thought, stay with me because we’re going somewhere important.

So, I know last week I talked all about burnout and how doing the smallest thing and lowering the bar is part of the solution. And all the while, it’s essential that you’re kind to yourself in the process. And so now, I’m here this week with an episode about being too nice to yourself. So, what gives?

Well, let me speak directly to that because I recognize that these two messages might sound contradictory. So here’s the thing. You know I’m all about self-compassion. I talk about it often on the podcast because it’s an essential component to changing your habits and making them stick. And I truly believe that you cannot beat yourself up into better. But that being said, I think many of us have misunderstood what self-compassion actually is. And so, instead of actually being kind to yourself, you avoid the hard stuff, but you do it under the guise of self-compassion.

You dodge the discomfort. You choose immediate relief over long-term growth. And the sticky part about this is that often, you call it self-care. You call it rest. Maybe you call it being gentle with yourself. But I’m going to be really, really honest here, and please really hear this. If the thing you are doing in the name of self-compassion is consistently keeping you from making progress or showing up for yourself, then it is not compassion. Okay? That’s self-sabotage in disguise.

So, this is so, so important to understand. If you are repeatedly not following through, or if you are repeatedly letting things slide under the premise of self-compassion, and it’s ultimately resulting in you making no progress, then we have a problem. And it’s not a self-compassion problem, it’s a self-sabotage problem. Okay? I want to make this crystal clear, and this is a key point I want you to consider right from the outset.

My goal is that you don’t push yourself over the edge. Okay? So many of the clients I work with and so many of the women I meet at conferences, they are already super, super hard on themselves, and they push themselves beyond their limits. So I’m not suggesting that you go and push harder. That is not going to work. But instead, my goal is to help you find a balance of self-compassion and follow-through that is enough to do both: meet you where you are right now and move you forward. So, if you are not moving forward, then I would argue that it is not self-compassion.

And so sometimes, not always, of course, but sometimes, what this amounts to is that sometimes we are flat out lying to ourselves. And the crazy part about this is that you might not even recognize that you’re doing it. You might convince yourself that skipping the gym is self-care, that eating the cookies you didn’t plan for is self-love, that staying up late to scroll TikTok instead of going to bed is just you taking a break.

But what if that’s not it? What if you’re explaining away your choices under the umbrella of kindness or self-compassion as a way to cover up fear, procrastination, or avoidance?

What if, “I’m being gentle with myself,” is really your code for, “I don’t want to feel uncomfortable right now?” And I know that might feel really icky to think about. It might not feel good to be thinking about the ways that you might be lying to yourself to keep you from feeling discomfort. And if you feel called out right now, please know that I’m sharing this and saying all of this because I’ve gone through it myself.

There are so many things I haven’t done because I didn’t want to be uncomfortable. There are countless conversations I did not have, emails I did not send, chances I did not take, and asks I did not ask because I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable.

I’ve done it in my career as a physician, in my career as a coach and entrepreneur, in my role as a wife, in my role as a daughter. I have done it many, many times, and it does not feel good. Deep down, it does not feel good to not do the thing you know you need to do. And so we often pass it off under the guise of, “I’m being nice to myself.” And it sounds convincing, right? Because who doesn’t want to be kind to themselves? But here’s the thing, this is another key takeaway to consider right from the start, just a few minutes in.

Real kindness is not letting yourself off the hook every time things get hard. Real kindness challenges you to grow. Real kindness allows you to see where you are capable of more and keeps you from pretending you can’t do it. Real kindness is honest.

So, I encourage you to start thinking of self-compassion as what helps you to stretch yourself without snapping. It’s that voice that tells you, “I know this is hard, and I know you can do it anyway.” So that voice does not coddle, and it also doesn’t criticize.

Self-compassion is that part of you that pushes you out of your comfort zone even when you want to quit. It’s the part of you that reminds yourself, “I’m not going to stay stuck.” And to be clear, that kind of self-compassion is not necessarily comfortable. It doesn’t feel warm and cozy like a bubble bath, okay?

Instead, sometimes self-compassion manifests as you waking up early to do your workout like you said you were going to do, even when you’re tired. It shows up as cooking the chicken and broccoli that you planned, even when picking up takeout would be so much easier. It’s saying no thank you to the cupcakes that your coworker brought in, even when those cupcakes look delicious, but you already have a plan to treat yourself later in the day. So what I want you to start thinking about is this: when your version of kindness and compassion doesn’t challenge you, doesn’t stretch you, or doesn’t support your long-term growth, then we have to be honest about what’s really going on.

And what’s really going on here is self-indulgence. It’s comfort at the expense of growth. It’s a short-term fix that creates long-term frustration. And it’s tricky because it feels good in the moment, but it ultimately keeps you turning in circles in the same loops, making the same excuses, feeling the same frustrations, and then wondering why nothing is changing. But you deserve better than that. You deserve to treat yourself in a way that moves you forward instead of spins you in circles. And you have the capacity to do that.

So, to be super clear, being too nice means you’re letting yourself off the hook repeatedly. You are bailing on your own goals. You’re letting the present you slide, and it’s costing you growth and a chance to become future you. And it’s super sneaky because that self-compassion feels like self-care in the moment. It feels like you’re giving yourself rest. But really, it’s avoidance in disguise. And I see this often in my clients when it comes to their diets and especially treats.

So I can think of one client just the other day, she was telling me about a coworker who brought in cupcakes for a birthday celebration. So, this coworker approached my client and offered her a cupcake. And my client wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t really planning to have a treat in the middle of her work day. And then she decided, “Well, I wanted to be nice to myself and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” So I decided to give myself a pass and have it. And you may hear this and think, “Yeah, she was being kind to herself.” But when we really dig into this, we pulled it apart a little and found that at the heart of it, she didn’t want to feel the discomfort of being the only one around her not having the cupcake.

Even though she had already had plenty to eat, she wasn’t hungry, and she wasn’t planning for a cupcake in the middle of her day. She didn’t want to feel discomfort. She didn’t want to feel deprived. She didn’t want to feel like she was restricting herself, and she didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. And again, this is just a cupcake we’re talking about. So you might be doing this on an even bigger scale, like maybe in your job search. So I have worked with a number of clients who are in career transition. And for many of them, reaching out to network, sending a CV, getting active on LinkedIn, those all might seem like no big deal. But for some of my clients, the idea of taking those steps forward is paralyzing.

The idea of sending an email is enough to make them sweat and say, “No thank you. Maybe some other time.” And so, you might put it off. You might tell yourself, “Well, this is too hard. This feels really icky to put myself out there. So I’ll just give myself a break because I don’t feel like it and this is too hard. And maybe I’ll think about it again tomorrow when I’m better rested, or after I do some more research, or after I muster more confidence.”

But then the next day comes and you’re not feeling any different. Nothing has changed and you’re not feeling any more ready than you were the day before. But you decide to give yourself a pass because you want to be gentle on yourself.

And I’m not going to lie, this is a very, very slippery slope because you can stay in that space of being nice to yourself for months or even years. And if you look for a reason to let yourself off the hook under the guise of being nice to yourself, rest assured you will find one because we are really, really good at negotiating with ourselves, and we’re really, really good at making ourselves right, especially when it works in our favor and keeps us out of discomfort.

But if being nice to yourself means talking yourself out of what you intended to do, and you do that enough that the result is you’re not moving forward, then that tells me we need to work on what self-compassion really looks like for you.

And so here’s a hard truth that I want to talk through. Real growth, the kind of growth that actually has the capacity to change your life, that is uncomfortable. Like the discomfort of skipping the second glass of wine, even though you always have a second glass of wine, but you know it’s not helping you get closer to your goals. Or getting up early to work out even when your bed is warm and fuzzy and you normally snooze right through your alarm.

Real growth means following through on the plans you made when you were feeling super motivated, even if you’re not feeling motivated anymore. And I get it. You might be tired. Maybe you had a long day. Maybe you just don’t feel like schlepping yourself to the gym. Maybe you just don’t have the energy to cook food at home for dinner. Maybe you don’t feel confident to send the email that you said you’d send.

And none of these are wrong. All of these reasons for explaining away why you aren’t following through, they sound reasonable, right? And if you keep telling yourself that these are all legitimate reasons for not following through on what you said you’re going to do, then these reasons or excuses will become fact to you. “I’m too tired,” will become your reality. “I don’t feel confident,” will become your reality. “I don’t feel like it,” will also become your reality. And it will be that much easier to let yourself off because these reasons will just feel like second nature to you. These reasons will just become part of your identity.

But is that really what you want for yourself? Because it does not have to play out that way. There is a different way through it. So, when you find yourself negotiating out of what you said you were going to do, when you find yourself repeatedly not following through, I want you to ask yourself this. Am I avoiding discomfort in the name of being nice to myself?

So really think about that question. Am I avoiding discomfort in the name of being nice to myself? And then answer the question honestly. That is key, because if you’re going to succeed at changing your habits and changing your life, it’s going to require full on honesty and transparency with yourself first and foremost.

And I know that sounds pretty straightforward, but I find that being honest with yourself can actually be quite a challenge. I have told myself, “Not now,” more times than I’d care to admit, whether that’s related to my career, starting a business, starting this podcast, dealing with a difficult relationship, a habit. I have made excuses for myself more times than I can count.

And it’s not until you get really honest with yourself and admit when you’re avoiding discomfort, and then take it a step further and do something different that things will start to change. So I mentioned this a few months ago and I think it’s worth repeating, but being honest with yourself can be hard because it means that you acknowledge the real reasons behind your behaviors without making excuses and without sugarcoating them. And that requires a willingness to face uncomfortable truths about yourself instead of hiding behind your rationalizations.

And that right there is not easy for many people to do. Most people do not like to face head on the things we don’t like about ourselves. I don’t like admitting to myself that I’m afraid of what people will think of me. I didn’t like admitting that I was hiding from what I really wanted. I didn’t like that I was afraid to speak up out of fear of being abandoned. But you know what? Once I did that, and once I got really, really honest with myself, things changed. Admittedly, it was really hard to own all of this. But once I did, I saw that I had the capacity to change it. And that was a much better place to be.

So if you’re not honest with yourself, and if you’re not honest about your patterns and your behaviors, then you’re never going to be able to change them. That’s the beauty in the breakdown. You have to be willing to break down the walls that you’ve built around yourself, the walls you’ve built in your own mind, and see where you’ve been lying to yourself. And you have to be willing to tear it all down. I know, it sounds awful, right? But it’s not. Please hear me when I say that.

When you are willing to admit that you’ve been lying to yourself and creating a wall of safety around yourself for protection, but you see that wall is built with a bunch of lies you’ve been telling yourself? Yes, it’s scary, but it’s also completely freeing. It’s like you’re out with it. It’s like all the yucky stuff that you’ve been holding inside is no longer stuck inside of you, and you can rebuild on a newer, more sturdy base. And once you see that and you get fully honest with yourself, and then take it even further by choosing a different course of action, that is when your world opens up.

So remember that growth happens when you turn towards the parts of yourself that you used to turn away from. So when you turn inward and admit to yourself where you’ve been avoiding discomfort in the name of being nice to yourself, then you can start to change it. You’re breaking down an unsteady foundation, one that is built on avoidance, to build a newer foundation, one that’s built on honesty and acceptance. And that is huge. So, the key takeaway here is that avoiding discomfort under the guise of being nice to yourself is actually not kindness, it’s escaping.

So now that we’ve pulled this apart a little bit, and hopefully now you’re seeing that avoiding discomfort in the name of self-compassion is actually not at all self-compassion, let’s flip this and talk about what real self-compassion actually looks like.

And I’m highlighting this specifically because in my own life, I didn’t really understand self-compassion until I started reading about it and learning about it. And before then, I’d just hear the term self-compassion and think of butterflies and cotton candy because I thought it just meant being nice to yourself. I thought it meant going soft. But here’s the thing. Self-compassion isn’t soft and fuzzy. It’s not taking the easy way out. It’s not painting pictures through rose-colored glasses.

Instead, self-compassion is honest. There’s that word again. But let me explain. Self-compassion is honest and says, “All right, I see that you’re totally exhausted. Let’s go to bed early so you can get up and work out tomorrow morning.” It’s not, “Gee, you’ve had a really rough day. Just skip your workout again.” No. Do you see the difference here? One of these has your back, has a plan, and keeps you moving forward. The other keeps you stuck and going in circles.

So remember what self-compassion is. It’s got three components, as defined by the mother of self-compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff. So she literally wrote the book on self-compassion, and if you haven’t read it, I highly, highly recommend it. So, when you have self-compassion, it means you treat yourself with self-kindness instead of self-judgment. It also means you recognize that messing up is not unique to you. In fact, it’s not unique to anyone. Self-compassion means that you recognize that messing up is part of the shared human experience. So in plain English, by nature of being a human being, you’re going to mess up.

And in terms of changing your habits, this means you’re going to eat the cookies. You’re going to sleep through your workout sometimes. By nature of being human, we’re all imperfect. And then last, when you do mess up, you neither under nor over identify with it. Meaning, you don’t over dramatize and perseverate over your mistakes, but you also don’t brush them off or ignore them either. You identify with your mistakes in a balanced, healthy way so that you keep moving forward.

All right, so quick and dirty. Self-compassion means you treat yourself with kindness instead of judgment. You recognize that as a human, you are going to mess up just like everyone else, and you don’t make a big deal out of it, and you also don’t shrug it off. So, now that we’ve talked through what self-compassion does and does not look like, here are some key things to be on the lookout for. I know I said it earlier, but this is sneaky. And the only way you’re going to discover if you’re using being nice to yourself as an excuse is if you’re actually looking for it.

So here they are. Here are some key signs that you’re using being nice to yourself as an excuse. First and foremost, you are not making progress. If you feel like you are spinning your wheels, and maybe even doing the right things in theory, but you’re not getting results, this would be a good reason to ask yourself if you’re giving yourself a pass more often than you realize. If you’re not moving forward towards your goals, and especially if it’s been months or years and you feel stuck, then I would really encourage you to look at why. What are you telling yourself that’s keeping you from changing your life? I have so many examples of this.

I had one client, she actually reached out to me years ago when I was earlier in my coaching practice. And we got everything teed up to get started, and right before our first session, she decided work was too busy. Then over a year later, she reached out again, and this time we did get started. And just a few sessions in, the same thing came up.

She wanted to take a prolonged pause because once again, work was too busy, and she felt she just did not have time to devote to working on herself. And she said both times that she just needed to be kind to herself and stay more focused on work. And I had another client who did a ton of traveling for her work. She spent many of her weeks in hotels on the go between conferences and meetings. And one of her key habits that she wanted to change was getting more movement in. She wanted to have exercise be a regular part of her day.

But it seemed like every time she traveled, she found a reason to put it off, whether it was a late night out with a client or an early start with morning meetings. It seemed there was always a reason to not get any exercise in. And it always came back to, “I’m just so tired.” And then she’d give herself a pass.

So, here’s the thing. In both of these instances, it could be really easy to justify and say, “Well, yeah, there’s no way she could follow through. Work is busy. The schedule doesn’t allow for it. Late nights and early mornings when you’re traveling makes it hard to get in any exercise.” So in either instance, you could argue that she’s just giving herself a break, right?

But what if this keeps going on? What if you keep coming back to the same reason for not taking action and you keep coming back to it under the premise of being nice to yourself? Then what? Is that still being nice to yourself? Or is it something else going on? And I would argue that if you’re not making any progress, we need to find out why. We need to dissect the story that you’re telling yourself about being too busy or too tired and decide how that is helping or hurting you.

And another sign that you might be using being nice to yourself as an excuse is if you keep renegotiating your plan. So, I can think of another client I worked with who really wanted to change how she ate. And when we first started working together, I asked if she could find one tiny habit that she wanted to work on and really work to nail that. So, she decided on food journaling because she thought that she wanted to get a better sense of what she was actually eating.

So then she came back to her session a week later, having done two days worth of food journaling and promptly decided she wanted to focus on counting protein instead. She felt that she wasn’t eating enough protein, and she didn’t want to get caught up in journaling or writing down all of her food or all of her macros, but she did want to ensure that she was getting 100 grams of protein per day. So she decided to focus on that habit.

And then, sure enough, next week, she came back to her session having tracked one day’s worth of protein and found that she got 70 something grams of protein in and that was not helpful. So maybe we would just work on cutting out processed snacks instead. And this could have gone on every time we met. But instead, I just gently pointed out that she had changed what she was working on three times in as many weeks, and why did she think that was happening? Because not only was she not making any progress, she wasn’t sticking with any of the habits she decided for herself, and she definitely was not making any real change. So we had to dig in there. And one of the things we discovered was that she didn’t like that she wasn’t hitting her goals.

In the first week, she didn’t journal for the full week. So she decided the habit was not going to work for her and she dropped that in the name of counting protein. But interestingly, the same thing happened, and she wasn’t able to count her protein perfectly, and she didn’t hit 100 grams per day target, so she gave it up. And at first go, it might seem like this is self-kindness. She wasn’t having immediate success with her habits, so she was looking for a different habit that would give her success.

But again, if you remember what we know about self-compassion, no one gets it perfect. By nature of being human, we’re all going to screw up. And if you use every screw up as a reason to abandon ship, renegotiate, and look for something new and different to try, you are never going to get anywhere. You will constantly be changing your plan without ever really seeing what you’re capable of doing.

By renegotiating, you’re not holding yourself accountable. You’re just changing the plan. You adjust your standards downward to match your mood instead of honoring the commitments you made when you were more clearheaded and focused. And that is most definitely going to keep you from making progress.

And the third sign that you’re using being nice to yourself as an excuse is when you feel short-term relief, but long-term frustration. So here’s the tricky thing about letting yourself have a pass under the guise of self-compassion. When you tell yourself, “Hey, I’m just going to be kind of myself and let it go for today,” you will feel a sigh of relief because there is most definitely relief.

You’ve decided to avoid discomfort, and so by nature, your brain is going to feel better as a result. And that will give you a short-term release. But it’s fleeting. And when you do this repeatedly, and if you repeatedly put off getting started on your daily walk because you’ve had a day and you need a pass, you will feel the impact. You will feel the cycle of a short-term, short-lasting reprieve followed by guilt, irritation, disappointment, and frustration at giving yourself a pass and letting yourself off the hook.

And that’s just it. You’ll know that you’re letting yourself off the hook because you’ll feel good in the moment, but you’ll be frustrated as stink later when your life is exactly the same as it was a few weeks or a few months ago. And that’s the tricky part of this. It might feel like you’re being kind to yourself in the moment, but you’re really not. You’re simply putting off doing what you need to do in order to move forward.

All right. So, if you’re nodding along to any of this, or if you’re quietly cringing as you recognize some of these things in yourself, that’s okay. It means you’re paying attention. And this might be the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. But my hope is that this is just helping you step back and ask yourself, “Am I really taking care of myself? Or am I just avoiding the hard stuff and calling it compassion? Am I protecting my energy or am I protecting my comfort zone?” And if you start to see any of these patterns for what they are, then you’ve got the capacity to change it. So, let’s talk about how to do it.

So here is the concept I want to introduce to you for how to manage this. If you want to be self-compassionate and still move forward on your goals, consider making your decisions based on your values instead of making decisions based on your emotions.

This is a key idea I want to offer you. And if after hearing this so far, you find that you’re being too nice to yourself, this is it. So, what does this actually mean? What does it mean to make a values-based decision versus an emotional one?

Okay, so a value-based decision is a choice that you make with your long-term goals and identity in mind. It’s one that you make using integrity and full-on honesty. Value-based decisions are rooted in who you want to be and the kind of life you want to create for yourself. So when you’re making a value-based decision, that is when you say, “I’m the kind of person who follows through,” and then you act accordingly, even when it’s hard. So that means you brush your teeth even when you’re tired. That means you go to the gym because you value your health and you value being a healthy person, not just because you feel like it in the moment.

So, an emotional decision, on the other hand, is reactive. So as it sounds, an emotional decision is driven by your feelings in the moment: tired, stressed, overwhelmed, annoyed, hungry, whatever it is. And while all of those feelings are real and those feelings are valid, they’re also temporary. And if you let temporary emotions make your decisions, you’re setting yourself up for long-term stalling.

Acting based on how you feel in the moment instead of acting based on what you value in the big picture leads to decisions that feel good now, but sabotage you later. And let me make it clear. Emotions are real and they most certainly deserve your attention, but they are not reliable decision makers. Emotions rise and fall. They’re fleeting. They fluctuate. They’re powerful, for sure, but they are not permanent.

And if you allow momentary emotional states to dictate your actions, you’re going to find yourself in the same patterns over and over again. And that is how you stay stuck. Not because you don’t know what to do, but because you’re letting your feelings veto what you do know. But it’s your values that ideally would have the final say.

So, yes, you can feel tired and still go to bed on time instead of scrolling social media. You can feel stressed and still follow through on your meal plan. You can feel overwhelmed and still choose to exercise and move your body. You can do both. Do you see that? You do both. You acknowledge what you’re feeling, but you don’t let those feelings run the show. That’s what it looks like to validate your emotions and act in alignment with your values. And that’s what it means to show up for yourself with honesty and still follow through.

And that is what creates a kinder version of discipline, the type of discipline that’s rooted in self-care instead of self-criticism. So you know, I love to talk about discipline. But I want to make something abundantly clear here. Sometimes when you think of discipline, you think of being harsh or rigid or punishing. And maybe you believed that if you weren’t being super tough on yourself, you weren’t doing it right. But that’s not the kind of discipline we’re talking about here. The type of discipline I’m talking about is still kind, but it’s firm. It’s supportive. It’s asking for effort from yourself because you know you’re capable. The kind of discipline I want for you is a voice that says, “Hey, I know this is hard, and I still expect you to show up because I know you can.”

So this kind of discipline is not about shouting, coercing, depriving, or restricting. Instead, it’s about respect. It’s about respecting your time, your energy, your goals, and yourself. And that is huge. So discipline in this light becomes a form of self-respect. So when I talk about discipline, I mean that you do the hard thing because you care about yourself, not because you hate yourself and not to punish yourself. You do the hard thing because you believe you’re worth the effort. And when you think about discipline this way, you’ll see discipline as less of a drill sergeant and more like a coach, someone who believes in you and knows that you’re capable of, even when you forget.

And so the takeaway here is that sometimes one of the kindest things that you can do for yourself is show discipline and follow through on what you said you’re going to do, even when it gets hard. You remind yourself, “Yep, this is where it gets hard, and I can do hard things.” And then you go do it.

So here is what I want you to remember. Self-compassion does not mean comfort all the time. Okay? This is so important to understand. Instead, self-compassion means being honest with yourself about what you need, not just in the moment, but in the long term. And sometimes, self-compassion means doing the hard, uncomfortable thing, the thing you really don’t want to do, because your future self is counting on it.

So here’s another thing to remember. Growth requires kind honesty, not an easy out. Kind honesty is when you say to yourself, “This is hard and you’re capable of doing it.” Kind honesty does not coddle, and it does not criticize, but it gives you what you need to move forward. And while easy outs may feel gentle in the moment, they come at a cost, and that cost is being stuck. Kind honesty, on the other hand, builds self-trust, it builds strength, and it builds momentum.

And last, please remember that you can care about yourself and still expect more from yourself. In fact, expecting more because you care is one of the highest forms of self-respect you can give yourself because it means you’re no longer willing to accept your own excuses. It means you’re ready to get after your goals with both compassion and accountability because you know you deserve and are capable of both. And sometimes the most loving, kind thing you can do is look yourself in the eye and say, “Nope, we are not skipping again. We’re doing this. Let’s go.”

So this week, pay attention. See if you can catch yourself and see if you find yourself being nice to avoid discomfort. So if you find yourself saying, “It’s fine,” or, “Maybe tomorrow,” pause and ask yourself, “Is this really kindness? Or is this fear of the hard thing?” And if it is fear, then you already know what your next step is. It’s not being mean to yourself, it’s not being militant, it’s being honest with yourself. Honest enough to say, “I deserve better. I deserve to show up and I will.” All right?

And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, I will help you stop accepting your excuses and we do it with kindness and accountability. Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact and let’s talk about how coaching will improve your relationship with yourself. All right? Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.



Hey if you want to build muscle but don’t know where to start, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/buildstrength and download my free guide to help you maximize your strength training. Inside, you’ll find the essential exercises for building muscle, plus simple one, two, and three-day workout plans you can follow with just dumbbells and a bench.

You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.

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