Tough love or softly, softly

Tough love only works when you really know a person and what makes them tick. I have a few people on my FL that I know well enough that I could push if I see they need it. There are others that this approach would have a very negative effect and many that I don;t know well enough to be anything more than encouraging.

In the end we have to be accountable to ourselves, but even using tough love self talk can at times be detrimental. Know your audience well enough to determine what approach is going to work the best.

I agree with the above.

also:

There's a lot of middle ground between berating yourself and verbally beating yourself up (or someone else) and pandering to excuse making and the like. It's not one thing or the other, in fact discussions like this tend to lead to the kind of polarisation of thinking that pushes some people into two unhealthy extremes, rather than a middle ground that will be a lot more productive and healthy for most people. I'm not against tough love if that's what works for you (and tough love does not necessarily mean berating yourself/someone else, but a lot of people understand it like that), but to imply (as some do, again not necessarily the OP) that the only alternative to tough love is pandering to weakness, excuses, etc is incorrect.

Taking responsibility for your failings is something you can do without berating yourself or beating yourself up (ditto when helping others motivate themselves to do the same).

For example: (works for self talk or for encouraging others)

berating yourself/someone: you're a failure, sort your life out or you'll never amount to ****

pandering: never mind, you can't help it, everything's so difficult, just do whatever you think is best and we'll be here for you

encouraging while taking responsibility: okay, well you know that wasn't a smart move. All is not lost though, you can get right back on track starting right now. What led to the screw-up? What can you do differently to stop it happening again?

There's a big difference between the three, and clearly it's not a dichotomous situation. And maybe the berating yourself example works for some people, the 3rd example works best for me, and I'd imagine it would for most people.

For who? Yourself? Your kids? Your friends? Random strangers on the Internet? And when? When they're having a hard day? Having a night out at a bar? Asking for your advice? Those should probably all be different degrees of tough-/gentle-ness.

I shoot for gentle-yet-firm. And I pay someone to be mean to me, because that doesn't work on yourself.