From Self-Pressure to Self-Leadership

A Creative Leadership Meditation on Tenderness, Gentleness, and Relearning Self-Compassion

We teach what we most need to learn. And lately, what I’ve needed to relearn, and to teach, is tenderness. Gentleness toward self.

Towards the parts of ourselves that are raw, tired, doubting, regretful. The parts that want to perform, impress, produce, solve problems. Same parts that probably just want to rest but don’t know how.

When I speak with leaders about the idea of being gentle with ourselves, the first reaction is rarely ease or comfort.

Instead it’s often anger.

A flash of irritation, as if we were all saying:“What the f*ck do you mean by gentleness?”

Exactly. Because the truth is, most of us never truly experienced it.

As children, we were corrected before we were comforted.

As students, we were measured, assessed (as opposed to nurtured).

As employees, we are still rewarded for endurance, not tenderness.

As mothers, partners, or caregivers, we give gentleness, but rarely get it back.

We are praised for being strong, but rarely permitted to be soft.

So when someone suggests self-gentleness, it touches something raw.

It may trigger us not because it’s wrong, but because it illuminates just how impacted we’ve been by the lack of it.

Research on self-compassion (Neff, 2003) shows that people who resist it most strongly are often those who need it most. Why? Because it goes against everything we were taught to believe about how to survive, succeed, or stay worthy of love.

Gentleness: The Missing Leadership Skill

Let’s name something radical, what if gentleness is a leadership skill?

What if it's not something you earn after the hard part is over.

What if gentleness is clarity, discernment and power.

Walking away from a conversation that’s become loud, reactive, and unproductive, not out of anger, but because you calmly recognize your energy is better spent elsewhere.

(There is a difference between giving up and letting go. Stay with me for the next article!)

It’s saying, “I need more sleep today,” and honouring that signal as wise self-regulation.

It’s choosing boundaries without brutality: “Please include your proposed ideas when forwarding emails to me. It’s confusing otherwise.”

It’s shifting your self-talk from drill sergeant to ally: “Let’s go for a run, just for as long as it feels good today.”

Gentleness is not passivity. It’s not ignoring problems, rather it’s responding instead of reacting.

And yet, many of us were raised to believe that gentleness was weakness. That success comes only from being tough; that pressure builds character, and that burnout is somehow noble.

What if the very qualities we've been taught to suppress: tenderness, care, self-respect, are the ones most needed in a leader today?

“Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.”— Pema Chödrön

So I Turned to Research

I was curious. What does research actually say about gentleness, or self-compassion, or the absence of it?

Some findings worth noting:

• Self-compassion reduces burnout, improves emotional resilience, and strengthens motivation over time. (Neff & Germer, 2009)

• Harsh inner critics correlate strongly with anxiety, depression, and imposter syndrome, especially among high-achieving women.

• In global studies on leadership, leaders who display warmth and emotional self-regulation are consistently rated as more effective and trustworthy.

So What Happens When We’re Not Gentle With Ourselves?

Let’s be honest, we know this intimately. The lack of gentleness leads to:

• Chronic tension in the body (hello, aching necks and clenched jaws)

• Over-functioning, over-apologizing, overthinking (familiar anxiety)

• Creative block and decision fatigue

• The slow erosion of self-trust

  
  

When You’re Hard on Yourself All the Time…

When we’re hard on ourselves all the time, there’s no rest. No recovery. No return to center.

I don't mean this to be poetic, it’s biological.

When self-criticism becomes your default mode, your body remains in a prolonged state of stress. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, stays elevated. And while short bursts of cortisol can help in emergencies, chronic high cortisol levels actually impair memory, block creativity, weaken immunity, and damage our ability to emotionally regulate.

High cortisol doesn’t make us sharper, it makes us shrink. What boosts clarity and innovation is safety, rest and gentle attention.

Counterintuitively, when problems become overwhelming, experts don’t advise to push harder, they tell us to relax.

Neuroscientific studies show that creative problem-solving increases when the brain is in a more relaxed, alpha-wave state, like during meditation, daydreaming, or slow walking.

In other words, gentleness isn’t a detour from effectiveness, it’s the entry point.

It’s how we reclaim access to our full intelligence.

When Self-Discipline Becomes Self-Aggression

Here's the paradox: in a culture that praises productivity, willpower, and commitment to a cause, we’ve learned to turn nearly everything, even care and self-care, against ourselves.

We turn dieting into punishment. We turn exercise into penance. We turn activism into martyrdom, sacrifice.

We even turn healing into something we should be better at, definitely faster.

In the name of growth or goodness, we abandon ourselves. We override our body’s signals. We ignore exhaustion. We guilt ourselves for needing a break. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, we replace self-responsibility with self-aggression.

Even beautiful values, service, justice, health, spiritual practice, can become weapons when we use them to beat ourselves into shape or into doing good work.

We forget we are part of the world we're trying to heal. (We are included!)

Practicing Gentleness: From Self-Pressure to Self-Leadership

Here’s the hard truth: gentleness isn’t a mindset shift, it’s a practice.

A daily, sometimes hourly choice.

Try this:

• Place your hand on your chest or cheek.

• Say (out loud or silently): “This is hard right now. I’m doing my best. I don’t have to prove anything.”

• Breathe once, slowly.

• Drop your shoulders by 2%. (That’s enough.)

  
  

That’s it. That’s a beginning.

A Tender Defiance

I think many of us are angry when we hear “be gentle with yourself” because it feels like we’re being asked to rest without ever having felt safe.

But perhaps that’s the work now.

I will lead myself tenderly. I will rest before I collapse. I will not wait to be allowed to be kind to myself.

Start where you are, and begin again as many times as you need to.

I’d love to support you. As a creative leadership coach, I work with leaders and changemakers who are ready to lead differently and shift from Self-Pressure to Self-Leadership.

Reach out to explore coaching together, let’s just start with a conversation.

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Hi, I’m Monika, Strengths Coach and facilitator. I help individuals and their teams cultivate resilience, emotional intelligence, and well-being through strengths-based coaching. Passionate about transformative and creative leadership, I empower leaders to drive meaningful change within themselves, their organizations, and beyond.

I hope you’ll visit often, and I look forward to connecting and working