Forget not to be Patient with Yourself.

Last week, against my better judgement, I attended the General Relief Society Meeting for my church.  I wanted to be with my sisters, and they (unlike me) are not boycotting the meeting.  Some of you are probably wondering why I'm boycotting it (I'm not going to go until the Church considers it important enough to be part of General Conference) and some of you are probably thinking I am a hypocrite for not being true to myself (I won't apologize for valuing time with my sisters more than my useless stance on the General Relief Society meeting).   

Anyway, President Uchtdorf gave an amazing talk.  If you missed it, you should be excited to read it when it becomes available.  I'm not going to give a summary here but as part of the talk he counseled women to "forget not to be patient with yourself".  As I looked around the room, I could see that sentence resonating with every woman in there.  every woman, except for me.  Maybe I am a freak, but I have always felt that my problem is I cut myself too much slack.  I am too patient with myself.  If I feel tired, I let my kids watch a movie while I nap because "I deserve it".  If I am not in the mood to tidy the house, I let myself take the day off because "I'll just clean it tomorrow".  If I am feeling sad, I buy myself icecream because "it's okay to have a bad day".   If I don't meet one of my weekly goals (even if I mess up on Monday), I just shrug and say, "I'll try again next week." 

In fact, in the past couple of weeks, I have really been working on being more accountable to myself and being less patient with my weaknesses.  So the advice felt a little ironic to me, and made me feel like an outsider.  Does anyone else feel like they are too easy on themselves rather than too hard?