Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive

By letting go of identification with the self who knows things and controls things, I feel lighter inside—both in terms of feeling less bogged down and feeling more full of light.

If your goal is just to be supportive, helpful, and compassionate toward yourself whatever occurs, your goal is always achievable. You learn to embrace the mess as the full expression of experiencing human life. It’s not like you reach a state of balance and then stay that way. We constantly fall out of balance, over and over, and it’s compassion f

When we’re truly present and caring toward ourselves, in times of both joy and sorrow, the sense of being separate from others fades away.

If we, as women, are going to bring justice to an inequitable world, we’ll need to make sure that our compassion is directed inward as much as outward.

Workplace bias against women is based not only on beliefs that we’re communal rather than agentic (called descriptive stereotypes), but also that we should be communal rather than agentic (called prescriptive stereotypes).

the fact that caregiving professions are considered feminine means that employees in those fields also tend to be given less value and status as well as pay.

Workplaces that don’t prioritize the welfare of employees can easily become hostile environments, with self-serving bosses, corrosive office politics, sexual harassment, psychological abuse, even workplace violence. Laboring in uncaring work settings decreases morale, increases stress, and leads to depression.

Loving, connected presence will help hold the pain of it all without being overwhelmed. Brave, empowered clarity will rouse us to protect ourselves and our fellow humans from harm. Fulfilling, balanced authenticity will allow us to carve out a new sustainable way of living in the world. And encouraging, wise vision will inspire us to work for the c

People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve their abilities and change aspects of their personality. Those with a fixed mindset consider themselves stuck with whatever abilities their DNA and upbringing gave them, with little chance to alter their inherited fate.