This is great. I resteemed this.

I struggle with some of the things mentioned in this post all the time. I work for myself; my clients are corporate America, but I live in a spiritual hub of Northern California, so I also feel like I am in conflict with myself.

I went to a workshop last night about self compassion. One of the thoughts that stuck with me was the following:

In the US, self-esteem is a relative thing. It is relative to the achievements of others. We are "good" at something if we are better than others. So we count the things we are good at, and feel awful about things we are bad at.

But assigning ourselves the traits of "good at" or "bad at" is inherently dualistic. We are all of these things all of the time. We suffer if we tell ourselves we are "good" at something just as much as if we tell ourselves we are bad at them.

To be compassionate to ourselves, we need to let ourselves be all of these things. And just like we aren't good or bad at things really, we are not "Black" or "White" or whatever.....

Thanks for being thoughtful. Following you and resteeming this.