We know how to comfort the people we love when they fail, struggle, or feel lost. So why is it so difficult to offer ourselves the same kindness?
By Paras Aijaz Sario
We are often much gentler with other people than we are with ourselves. When a friend makes a mistake, we tell her, “It’s okay. You tried.” When someone we love feels exhausted, we tell them to rest. When someone fails, we remind them that one failure does not define who they are.
But when we make the same mistake, our words suddenly change.
We replay what happened. We question our decisions. We compare ourselves with everyone around us. We remember everything we could have done better. Sometimes, we don’t simply experience a mistake. We turn it into a judgment about ourselves.
Maybe we think being hard on ourselves will make us better. Perhaps we believe that if we keep pointing out everything that is wrong with us, we will somehow become more disciplined, more successful, or more deserving of the life we want.
But there is a difference between wanting to improve yourself and believing that you are never good enough. We can acknowledge that we need to grow without treating ourselves like a problem that needs to be fixed.
We can say, “I could have handled that better,” without saying, “I always ruin everything.”
We can have an unproductive day without deciding that we are lazy.
We can fail at something without turning that failure into our identity.
Perhaps we should also ask ourselves why we sometimes change so much for the people we love.
When we care about someone, we naturally adjust. We learn what makes them happy. We change little things about ourselves. We try to understand them. Sometimes we even become the version of ourselves that we think they would love the most.
There is nothing wrong with growing for the people we care about.
But somewhere in that process, we can forget to ask ourselves who we are becoming.
We begin thinking that if we change this part of ourselves, perhaps they will like us more. If we become what they need, perhaps they will stay. If we become easier to love, perhaps we will finally feel enough.
And slowly, without realizing it, we can become so focused on being loved by someone else that we forget how to love ourselves.
Don’t adjust so much for someone else that you become unfamiliar to yourself.
Maybe self-love begins here! Not with believing that everything about us is perfect, but with remembering that we are still allowed to be ourselves while we grow.
We can change our habits because we care about our future.
We can learn because we believe we are capable of more.
We can heal because we deserve peace.
We can become kinder because we want to become someone we are proud to live with.
There is a difference between improving yourself because you hate who you are and improving yourself because you love who you are becoming.
The first one constantly tells you that you are not enough.
The second reminds you that you are worth the effort.
And perhaps we need to become more careful about the way we speak to ourselves.
If your closest friend came to you with the exact mistake you made, would you speak to her the way you speak to yourself?
Would you remind her of every mistake she has ever made?
Would you tell her that everyone else is doing better?
Would you tell her that one difficult day means she is failing at life?
Probably not.
So why should the person receiving the harshest version of your voice be you?
Self-love does not always look like confidence.
Sometimes it looks like allowing yourself to rest without feeling guilty.
Sometimes it means forgiving yourself for not knowing something earlier.
Sometimes it means accepting that your journey is slower than someone else’s.
Sometimes it is simply refusing to turn one difficult day into a judgment about your entire life.
Maybe healing is not always about learning to love every part of ourselves immediately.
Maybe sometimes healing begins with something much quieter: learning not to be cruel to ourselves.
We already know how to give kindness. We give it to our friends, our families, the people we love, and sometimes even to complete strangers. Perhaps we just need to remember that we deserve some of it too. And maybe we don’t have to become our own biggest admirers overnight. Perhaps we can begin by becoming a safe place for ourselves, a place where mistakes can be acknowledged, growth can happen, and imperfections do not have to become reasons for self-hatred.
Because the way we change for the people we love, we can also change for ourselves.
The way we encourage others to heal, we can encourage ourselves.
The way we believe someone else deserves another chance; we can give ourselves one too.
Perhaps self-love is not about refusing to change.
Perhaps it is learning to change without abandoning yourself.
And maybe, in the end, loving ourselves simply means giving ourselves the same understanding we have spent so much of our lives giving everyone else.
Because if we can learn how to be gentle with the people we love, perhaps we can finally learn to be gentle with the person who has been there through all of it:
Ourselves.
Read: Voices Rise, Attention Falls Silent
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Paras Aijaz is a Computer Science student from Larkana, Sindh. She writes personal reflective essays about growth, student life, and the quiet emotional experiences that many people carry but rarely express.
