Fierce Self-Compassion Quotes

“When we open to the reality of what is, even if we don’t like what is, it helps almost immediately.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“When we relate to ourselves with tender self-compassion, we care for and nurture ourselves. When we relate to ourselves with fierce self-compassion, we assert our autonomy and stand up for our rights.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“At the most basic level, self-compassion simply requires being a good friend to ourselves.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“According to my model, self-compassion is comprised of three main elements: mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness. These elements are distinct but interact as a system, and all three must be present in a self-compassionate mindset to make it healthy and stable.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Self-esteem is a fair-weather friend. It’s there when things go well but deserts you when things go badly, just when you need it most. Self-compassion is a perfect alternative to self-esteem. It doesn’t require feeling better than others, it isn’t contingent on other people liking you, and it doesn’t require getting things right.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“When we open our hearts to what is, it generates a level of warmth that helps heal our wounds.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“The golden rule says: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. An addendum should be: Do NOT do unto others as you do unto yourself, or you’ll have no friends.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Sometimes we need to be angry in order to have the courage to confront those threatening or disrespecting us. If we don’t get angry, we’ll be much less likely to stand up for ourselves. Because anger energizes us and focuses us on the threat at hand, it equips us to take self-protective action.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“The best context for examining this is a close friendship—because let’s face it, sometimes we’re not as compassionate as we might like to be with our children or partners or family members: they’re too close. We tend to have more space in our reactions with our friends, and we take them less for granted since these relationships are voluntary. This means we’re often our best selves with our close friends.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“take action to be more fulfilled, while also realizing that you are already whole and complete exactly as you are? The desire to meet your needs doesn’t come from a place of deficiency, but from an abundant heart.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“what’s more important than the intensity of the challenge you face in life is how you relate to yourself in the midst of it.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“When someone close to us is feeling inadequate or is facing a difficult life challenge, we’ve learned over the years what to say: “I’m so sorry. What do you need right now? Is there anything I can do to help? Remember I’m here for you.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“When we open our hearts, we tap into an unlimited pool of compassion. The more it flows inward, the more it can flow outward.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Self-esteem is a fair-weather friend. It’s there when things go well but deserts you when things go badly, just when you need it most. Self-compassion is a perfect alternative to self-esteem. It doesn’t require feeling better than others, it isn’t contingent on other people liking you, and it doesn’t require getting things right. All you need to have self-compassion is to be a flawed human being like everyone else. It’s a constant source of support and refuge.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“So why do we treat ourselves so differently than we do our friends? One reason has to do with how we deal with threats. When we notice something about ourselves that we don’t like or when we face a life challenge, we feel personally threatened.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“The three components of self-compassion—kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness—each play a crucial role in tender self-compassion. Kindness is the emotional attitude that allows us to comfort and soothe ourselves. Common humanity provides the wisdom to understand that we’re not alone, and to see that imperfection is part of the shared human experience. And mindfulness allows us to be present with our suffering, so that we can validate our difficult feelings without immediately trying to fix or change them. These three elements take a particular form when tender self-compassion is used to meet our needs: loving, connected presence.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“It’s ironic that anger, which is an inherently powerful emotion, causes women to feel powerless because we’re not allowed to acknowledge anger as part of our true nature. Instead, we feel like an alien force has taken us over and say things like “I lost it” or “I wasn’t myself.” This is because women have been taught to reject their anger and to see it as foreign.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“In a meta-analysis of seventy-one studies, we found that women consistently had lower self-compassion scores, although the difference was a small one. The reason we’re less self-compassionate is partly due to the fact that we tend to be more self-critical.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“We feel uncomfortable when things don’t fit with our schemas—a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Connectedness is inherent to compassion. When compassion is turned inward, it means we acknowledge that all humans are imperfect and lead an imperfect life. While this may sound obvious, we often fall into the trap of believing that things should go well and that something has gone wrong when they don’t.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Tender self-compassion allows us to accept the discomfort of an unwanted task and to be nonjudgmental about our desire to put it off. Fierce self-compassion then propels us to take action so that we do what’s needed.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“See if you can allow gentle self-acceptance to coexist with the active drive for self-improvement.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Tender self-compassion allows us to comfort and reassure ourselves when we don’t succeed, and fierce self-compassion inspires us to try again.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“A valuable framework for understanding how”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“The point of spiritual practice isn’t to perfect yourself, but to perfect your love.” Love is the driving force of both fierce and tender self-compassion.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“After all, social activism is an act of self-compassion (not just other-compassion) because we’re all interconnected, and injustice impacts us all.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. —Gloria Steinem, author and activist”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Ultimately, wisdom is needed to determine how, when, and where to draw boundaries, ask for what we need, improve our relationship interactions or perhaps even to end unhealthy partnerships. But wisdom can't emerge without the inner strength, warmth, and stability offered by fierce and tender self-compassion.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“Relationships are messy and complicated, which is why compassion needs to flow outward to our partners as well as inward to ourselves in a balanced manner. We're all just human beings doing the best we can in the moment.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive

“We need both fierce and tender self-compassion to work with relationship imbalances. The tender, nurturing, accepting side of self-compassion allows us to realize that our worth is not dependent on the love or support of others. It also helps us to hold the pain and grief of not being treated as we deserve to be treated, or of having a relationship partner who is not capable of really being there for us.”
― Kristin Neff, Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive