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REFLECTIONS ON RESEARCH

Self-Compassion Is Not Self-Pity: And the Research Is Clear About the Difference

Julie Jones5 min readJune 1, 2026

Neff's twenty years of work on self-compassion, and Goyal's 2014 JAMA meta-analysis on mindfulness, converge on a finding that consistently surprises the executives I share it with. What changes when high-performing leaders stop confusing self-compassion with going easy on themselves.

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About the Author

Julie Jones

Founder of Arevita 360 and Excellence Wellness Solutions. Two decades of executive coaching at the intersection of wellness research and how leaders actually lead.

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