I am gentle with myself.

Picture the voice you use with a friend who is learning to drive. Slow down, that was fine, everyone stalls there, go again. Nothing in it is soft on standards. It just assumes the person is trying.

Then there is the voice that arrives when you make the same order of mistake. Different vocabulary entirely. Different tone, different verdict, delivered considerably faster.

Gentleness is not lowering the bar. It is applying to yourself the tone you would use for anyone else who was, in fact, doing their best with what they knew at the time.