Speak gently with yourself

“I’ve always been hard on myself, about my career or not reading enough or going to bed too late, I give myself such a hard time about so many things,” Aadil tells me. He remembers a wisdom that his father shared with him at a particularly difficult time when he was trying to figure out what to do with his life: “You should speak to yourself the same way you speak to someone else who’s going through a tough time or being hard on themselves,” his Dad said.“If someone else is hurting or being down on themselves, we always say, ‘don’t worry, it’s all going to work out’, or ‘look how much you have achieved,’”Aadil says, “but when it’s us, we’re like, ‘you’re a failure!’ If we spoke to ourselves the same way we spoke to others, we would really not knock ourselves down so much; we’d boost ourselves up, ourselves.”Aadil had shared this wisdom with me a few weeks ago. Today, he was over and we were catching up and I was telling him how proud I am of all his recent successes. He was grateful too, but then he started listing things that he’s upset at himself about or that haven’t quite worked out. I reminded him of his Dad’s wisdom.Sometimes a wisdom gets buried in our thoughts and needs a little dusting off.Day 19 Wisdom 19: Speak to yourself with the same compassion that you would someone else.Follow all 30 wisdoms on Facebook @30 days 30 deeds or on Insta/Twitter @salmahasanali; and please share your own.