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.

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.

We don’t suppress our pain and pretend it’s not there, but we don’t run away with a dramatic story line about it either.

Self-compassion helps us focus on why we’re trying to achieve something.

When we use fierce self-compassion to motivate ourselves, we experience it as encouraging, wise vision.

The quintessential question of self-compassion is “What do I need right now?”

Sure, it’s good to be kind and giving to others, but kindness must also be balanced so that it includes ourselves. If it doesn’t, this generosity only serves a patriarchal system where women aren’t considered valuable in their own right, as full and equal participants.

The goals of self-esteem and self-compassion are polar opposites. One is about getting it right, the other is about opening our hearts. The second option allows us to be fully human.

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