What It Really Means To Be Kind To Yourself

@thoughtcatalog

When we think of kindness, we often confuse niceness & the two of them are not the same.
When we are being nice, we are being placid & non-responsive. We are not aggravating, we are not triggering, we are not pointing out anything important, we are not addressing what really needs to be said. We are washing over our natural & essential reactions for the sake of not disputing someone else's waters, even if in all honesty, that's exactly what they need.

We behave this way because it's not always our place to tell someone what they need to hear.
It is always our place to maintain that type of honestly with ourselves. Being kind to yourself is often doing the thing you least want to do.

It is very often prioritising your future needs over your current wants. It is awakening yourself to your destructive habits, it is recognising your self-defeating patterns, it is learning how to self-heal, it is setting good boundaries first with ourselves & then with others, it is recognising our power & remembering how we have neglected to use it. That is kindness. Everything else is a distraction.
The kindest thing to do is not always going to be the easiest. It doesn't always come with a sweet smile & a comforting hand. It doesn't always soothe us to sleep. True kindness is a fire that wakes you in the night. It's a calling that you can't ignore. It's tough love, it's seeing reality for what it is. It is acceptance, it is choice, it is reclamation.

When we are truly being kind to ourselves, we are actually in a process of reparenting ourselves.
We are doing for ourselves what we always relied on others to do - and we are doing it for the sake of our long-term & overall wellbeing.

We are taking ourselves up on an opportunity to do what is right as opposed to what is easy. We are choosing to do what is important over what is yet another way to numb & cope with the discomfort.
Kindness is loving ourselves enough to do that.

It is believing in our potential enough to choose better. It is caring enough about ourselves that we decide we're going to stop accepting a life that's less than what we deserve. It is fighting for who we are & who we might be one day.

There is nobody in the world who can show you the type of kindness that you can show yourself.
Yes, through understanding, empathy & compassion & through the commitment to see yourself to a type of life in which you can do what you were born to do, be who you were born to be & create the destiny you want to create. You are meant for that. The only thing you have to do now is decide whether you're going to choose it.

B x