Self-compassion is often confused with self-indulgence or lowered standards, but the two are quite different in practice. Self-compassion means treating your own setbacks with the same basic decency you would offer a friend, rather than either excusing them entirely or attacking yourself over them without any restraint.
Research on the concept consistently finds that self-compassionate people are not less motivated, as critics sometimes assume, but often more resilient after a genuine failure, since they spend less energy on self-punishment and more on actually addressing the problem in front of them with a clearer head.
Practising it usually starts small: noticing the harsh internal voice that follows a mistake, and deliberately asking what a decent, reasonable friend would actually say in that same moment, then trying to offer roughly that instead of the automatic, much harsher default response most people reach for first. Over time, that small, repeated shift in tone tends to matter more than any single dramatic act of self-forgiveness attempted only once and then forgotten.