She was exhausted.
A client. Just back from a hard trip overseas to see her mother. Batteries low. The kind of tired that doesn't go away with sleep. Or coffee. Or a weekend.
She told me she'd fallen behind on her numbers. The spreadsheet she usually keeps up with? Untouched. The tracking? Slipped.
A few years ago, that would've sent her into a shame spiral.
But here's what struck me: she wasn't beating herself up about it.
She told me she's learned to have discernment with herself. To know when to push forward and when to pull back. She's proud of that. It took work to get there.
Then she said something that stopped me:
"Self-compassion allows self-esteem to grow."
I wrote it down.
THE NEXT TWO CALLS
Different clients. Different situations. Same territory.
Both were beating themselves up over choices they'd made in the past. Spending decisions. Career moves. Things they couldn't undo.
The shame was loud. And the shame was leading to more spending — the spiral I've seen a hundred times.
I told them about the first client. I shared the quote.
They wrote it down too.
THE CONNECTION
Here's what I've learned after 15 years:
Being hard on yourself doesn't fix anything. It makes it worse.
Shame → spending → more shame → more spending.
You don't budget your way out of that. You don't spreadsheet your way out of that.
You have to start somewhere else. Underneath.
I STRUGGLE WITH THIS TOO
I'll be honest — self-compassion doesn't come easy to me.
For a long time, I was my own worst enemy. Hard on myself about mistakes. Replaying things I said. Things I didn't do. Choices I got wrong.
And here's what I didn't realize: I thought it was protecting me.
If I got to my flaws first, no one else could hurt me with them. If I already knew I wasn't good enough, the criticism couldn't land. I was a survivalist — picking myself apart before anyone else had the chance.
But that's not how it works.
Beating yourself up doesn't build armor. It just makes you believe you deserve the beating.
You're not protecting yourself. You're training yourself to believe every bad thing someone could say about you is true.
This is something I've been working on for the last few years. Not months. Years.
Slowly, something started to shift.
I stopped waiting for permission to be okay with myself. I stopped narrating my life like a critic and started narrating it like someone who actually wants me to win.
I started to see it differently: I'm human. Humans aren't built perfect. We're custom built — with challenges to overcome, internally and externally.
That's not a flaw. That's the design.
My job isn't to be perfect. My job is to show up and do the work. Day after day.
When I started seeing it that way, it became empowering instead of exhausting.
BACK TO HER
Here's what's rare about this client:
She already has it.
Most of us — me included — beat ourselves into the ground. We're our own worst critics.
She's not. She has self-compassion. Real, practiced self-compassion.
And I've seen what happens when she uses it.
This isn't the first time she's fallen behind. Life has knocked her down before — hard. Every time, she gives herself grace instead of grief. And every time, she pulls through. Gets back on track. Stronger than before.
It's not luck. It's the pattern.
It's a breath of fresh air. And honestly? It's why she's going to succeed — with her finances and everything else.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Self-compassion allows self-esteem to grow.
Not the other way around.
You don't earn the right to be kind to yourself after you've fixed everything. You start there. And the rest follows.
Avraham Byers
Financial Coach
P.S. I'm a financial coach — which, if you've never heard of one, welcome to the club. I work on both the numbers and the shame spirals. The "where did all my money go?" moments. The fights about spending. All of it.
If this resonated, grab my free ebook Your Magic Number. Twenty minutes. No guilt. One number, one day at a time. It'll change how you think about money.
👉 Get your free copy of Your Magic Number →
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