Do you give yourself the same amount of grace as you give others? When someone close to you makes a mistake do you support them and help them rectify it? Or do you harass them for months or years? It’s probably the former, right? Yet we often choose the latter for ourselves.

Being able to look at the world, and especially ourselves without judgement is one of the hardest parts of mindfulness. It’s also the most rewarding. Letting go of years of learned behavior is hard, it’s OK to slip. All we have to do is begin again.

Start with something small. I’m always giving myself a bad time because I hate putting away laundry. I’ll take it out of the dryer and fold it – but just stack it on top of the dryer! First – what is the harm in that? There are no clothes police coming to make sure you immediately put laundry away. When I dig a bit deeper I can see the roots of my angst. I’m going to let go of this in 2026. Do I want a tidy home? Absolutely. But if there’s neat piles of folded laundry on the dryer from time to time – that’s OK too.

What small thing can you give yourself grace over? What big thing?