I have been thinking a lot lately about compassion and empathy, and how important it is to remember that everyone you meet has a story, has challenges and struggles, and is an imperfect human being who makes mistakes and is just trying to navigate life on planet earth as best they can.

But what if I told you that it is equally important to remember that all of this is also true for yourself?

I think that it is often much easier to have compassion for others, even strangers that we have never met than it is to find compassion and empathy for ourselves.

Many of us are very hard on ourselves, judging every flaw we find and focusing on all of the ways that we feel like we don’t measure up, giving attention to where we think we have “failed” and therefore are not “good enough”.

But the truth is, we are only human, and we all make mistakes.

In fact, making mistakes and (hopefully) learning from them is the entire point of being here, in a body and reincarnated on planet earth today.

Life is like a school, and we are beings who learn by doing, so when we are confronted with challenges we are supposed to “fail” at them in order to gain the wisdom and life experience that we are here to gain.

This is why looking back at the past, whether your past in this life or your childhood, or your past lives is so incredibly valuable, as we can see the choices that we have made as an earlier or “younger” version of ourselves in order to see exactly how much we have learned, grown, and how far we have come.

But it is important to remember that none of us are perfect, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

We all chose to come back and be reborn right now, as a beautifully flawed human being who is here to learn.

You are a constant work in progress that spans many lifetimes, so go easy on yourself and next time you make a mistake, remember that you are here to learn and grow – just like everyone else.