Being Gentle With Yourself (While Still Getting Shit Done)

People often think being soft means being lazy or unproductive. That’s a lie.

It’s about balance. It’s about finding the strength and inspiration in stillness and letting those moments of rest fuel you.

I won’t lie — getting myself to do “less” has been really fucking hard. It’s a practice. I’ll catch myself wanting to plan out my days or stressing about a project I have to get done. Productivity is a like addiction. You get something done and feel amazing for a little bit, but pretty soon, your mind is already onto the next thing that needs to get done.

When you’re stuck on the productivity wheel, you’re never finished, and never satisfied with what you’ve done. There’s always going to be more.

Learning how to tear down the wheel and use the parts in another way takes time. But we can damn well try.

What ‘Being Gentle’ Really Means

It’s not about slacking off. It’s about working smarter, not harder. It’s about honoring your body, mind, and emotions so you can perform at your highest level.

It’s about moving with self-compassion instead of self-criticism.

It’s about ditching the “push through” mentality and embracing the “flow with” approach.

All these things are deeply ingrained in us. From the time we start going to school, we start learning to ignore our bodies for the sake of productivity. We learn how to fit in to the standards and expectations of society to behave, look, speak a certain way.

Especially as young girls and women, we are discouraged from being too loud, too soft, too much of anything. We are to sit quietly, be obedient, and tend to the needs of everyone and everything around us before ourselves. We are taught to ignore ourselves for the “greater good.”

So it’s no surprise that as adults we lean towards pushing through and ignoring our own needs in favor of caring for someone else’s.

In all of that, we also face constant pressure of having to prove our worth to the world. It’s not enough to just be who we are.

When we begin to honor our bodies and our needs first, we put ourselves in a position of power. We become more effective, we become stronger within ourselves, learn how to trust ourselves and our intuition.

Being gentle means putting in that work to become comfortable with our whole selves. Setting and keeping boundaries. Unraveling ourselves from capitalist harm and finding our own paths to follow.

How Being Gentle Makes You More Productive

It’s simple…and also really involved. The short answer?? Less burnout and exhaustion = more energy and bandwidth to actually do the work, and do the work well.

When you allow yourself to rest, reflect, and reset, you make better decisions instead of rushing or forcing. You can be thoughtful and intentional in your work. Not just work either, but those daily activities that take up our brain space.

Self-kindness reduces resistance. Instead of fighting yourself, you move with yourself.

Creativity and problem-solving thrive in ease, not stress.

Think about all those times you’ve been forced to make a decision from a place of stress or anxiety. Rushed into choosing something without the ability to pause and think it through. How often do you end up going back and fixing the result? Or worse, it’s something you can’t fix and are stuck with the regret?

Giving ourselves space to exist in ease just makes things better. You can be more proud of what you do, or don’t do. You can exist without pressure to produce something for the sake of “getting it done” just to end up with a shitty result and even more stress to produce more to make up for it.

Creating or producing from a place of softness and ease will give you better results every time.

My Personal Shifts & Results

I’ve got to be honest here — my initial need to slow down was by force, not by choice.

Because of an unfortunate medical situation, I found myself barely able to function. I mean like…bed-bound, not able to think, not able to create, dragging ass at work — if I could even make it in.

While the situation was entirely avoidable and I wish it hadn’t happened, it did show me a lot.

What started off as forced rest turned into an intentional movement within myself. I found that by slowing down, I was actually gaining more space for the things I love. Instead of running on autopilot, I began to explore. I started seeing little shifts in my mindset, my work, my creativity, and found that what I was creating from a space of softness and ease was actually much more aligned with my values.

And it was better.

I was giving myself time to create something meaningful, rather than just checking a box. Questions started coming up for me that I think I had been shoving aside for years. Some of these questions found organic answers through rest, some are requiring more exploration. And I’m loving it.

The difference in creating or producing from a space of intentional slowness and softness instead of scarcity and fear has upended my approach to everything in incredible ways.

I won’t say it doesn’t scare the shit out of me, but I will say I have more calm than I could’ve imagined.

This is a lifelong process, so we’ll see what it all turns out, but I am wildly optimistic in the face of it all.

The key is balance.

I’m keeping a few important routines—my skincare, meditating and journaling, and reincorporating yoga— but everything else is off book. I’m allowing myself to feel when I feel, create when I want to create, and experience life as it comes.

Practical Ways to Be Gentle & Still Get Shit Done

These are simple, but effective. You can do all of them or start with one or two. Feel it out and see what works best for you.

1. Listen to your energy cycles. Stop forcing productivity in low-energy moments; use those times for reflection or creativity.
2. Shift from ‘push’ to ‘flow.’ Ask: “How can I make this feel lighter?” instead of just “How can I get this done?”
3. Celebrate progress, not just perfection. Recognize small wins instead of only focusing on what’s unfinished.
4. Reframe rest as part of success. Recovery time isn’t wasted time—it’s fuel.
   

Pretty low effort, but it can be really fucking hard for those of us who have been running on GO for years. Whether out of survival or just habit, it may take some time to get used to slowing things down. And…it may feel really uncomfortable at first.

Take some time to think about why it’s uncomfortable, and how you want to navigate that discomfort in a way that honors your body and mind. Take your time.

Self-Reflection Questions

• Where in your life are you pushing too hard? How is that working for you?
• What would happen if you were 10% gentler with yourself this week?
• How do you define “being productive”? Does that definition need a rewrite?
• What’s one way you can honor your needs without feeling guilty?
  

Action Exercises: Steps for Your Own ‘Gentle Journey’

If you choose to start this process, here are some good places to start. Really get into the grit of why you want to make this change, what could happen if you do (or don’t,) different ways to start without overwhelming yourself, etc.

It’s not an overnight switch. This shit takes time. And I know, we want things to just “be better” and we want to bust our asses making it better, BUT…. sometimes we need to stop busting our asses and slow the fuck down.

See what these exercises bring up for you. Do you feel like this could be the change you’re looking for?

1. The Self-Kindness Audit – Write down the areas where you’re hardest on yourself. Next to each one, write how you could approach it with more softness.
2. The ‘Lighter Way’ Experiment – Pick one task this week and ask: “What’s the easiest, most enjoyable way I could do this?” Then try it.
3. Energy-Based Planning – Track your energy for a few days and notice when you feel most focused vs. drained. Adjust your schedule to match your natural flow.
4. The Reframe Ritual – Every time you catch yourself thinking, I should be doing more, reframe it: What I’ve done today is enough. I am moving forward.
   

What’s one thing you can do this week to work with yourself instead of against yourself?

Finding Yourself in the Softness

As I’ve said, this work is hard. It’s like holding up a mirror to your deepest insecurities and learning to say, “I love all of you,” anyways.

It’s embracing those moments of pain and exhaustion while also letting them go, holding yourself close.

We don’t have to live in this cycle of go go go, pushing ourselves til we break and getting right back up and into the mess again. There is a gentler way. One in which we still get back up after we fall, but we do it in a way that is gentle and compassionate.

Putting ourselves first, exploring our whole selves, giving ourselves permission to be ourselves and be gentle with ourselves is fucking POWERFUL. It’s disruptive.

In a society where we are expected to be everything to everyone but ourselves, and to produce as much as possible, saying “No, I don’t accept that,” is a HUGE step. It’s a declaration that we won’t be reduced to productivity machines. That we don’t only exist to serve and be pawns in a system hellbent on breaking us.

We are more. We deserve more. And it starts with US.

This is more than just self care. This is a refusal to be broken.

And this? It’s all just the beginning.