Please Have Compassion For Yourself—You Are Still Growing 🌱
'You will get to where you need to be.'
Welcome to the Collective World X Thought Catalog Newsletter. Collective World is a one-of-a-kind creative network powered by the minds and voices behind The Thought & Expression Company. We’re so glad you’re here.
Every day, you are growing. You are learning something new. You are in the process of becoming who you are meant to be.
It sounds romantic when it’s put like that, doesn’t it? Oftentimes, though, it isn’t. It’s messy. It’s heartbreaking. It’s draining, too. It’s putting all of your energy into scaling one mountain to realize there’s just another one up ahead.
Here’s the thing about growing and learning—it’s often the consequence of something. It’s because we make a mistake and have to deal with the aftermath. It’s because we’ve gone through something difficult and chose to find the lessons in the hardship. It’s because we’ve allowed ourselves to try walking in someone else’s shoes and challenged the ideologies and viewpoints we’ve always held onto so tightly.
Growth rarely happens at our most comfortable, and especially not at our most perfect. It happens in the moments we’re most afraid of, in the places we never thought we’d go to, with the people we never thought we’d learn from.
That doesn’t mean we should go around chasing painful situations in hopes that we will find something valuable there. But it is a reason to remind yourself how important self-compassion is. It’s so easy to beat yourself up over the things you did wrong, or the situations you think you could have avoided, or the moments you regret the most. It’s so easy to turn yourself into a villain instead of understanding that you are a person trying to navigate this life the same way everyone else is. Sometimes you’ll stumble, and that’s okay. It’s important that you know it’s okay.
As Kirsten Corley so eloquently put it, “We all have weak and insecure moments. And that’s okay. It’s what you do after that moment that counts for everything.”
You can’t change the past. There’s no use remaining angry at yourself over things you no longer have any control over. You did your best—you’re doing your best—and now the most important thing is learning how to move forward.
Let yourself grow from what you’ve been through, but try to forgive yourself, too. Because every day, you’re given the opportunity to take one step closer to the person you’ve always wanted to be—choose to have faith in that version of yourself, and choose to love the person you used to be unconditionally.
What We’re Reading This Week 📖💛
“Loving someone is vulnerable. It’s sensitive. It’s tender. And I get lost in them. If I love someone, I start to disappear.” — Jennette McCurdy
“Before dementia whisked you away, you were ours. We heard your voice on the phone every day. ‘Hey, Hun. It’s just Mom.’ Our phone doesn’t ring anymore.” — Jenny Cokeley
“I looked at all the words and pages and books surrounding me on the shelves and wished for the first time in a long time that some of them belonged to me.” — Natasha Sizlo
“We get our needs met by communicating them. And that can be really hard.” — Nedra Glover Tawwab
For more reading recommendations follow Quote Catalog where we find and file the best things to read every single day.
Let us leave you with this:
“Please, if there’s one thing you do today,
let it be to hold your soul in compassion.
You have been through far too much
to be anything but kind to yourself.” — Jacqueline Whitney
🤍
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