Tag: compassion

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3 Key Ways You Benefit When You Show Compassion To Others

Elissasimanowitz, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I can think of few things more beautiful than compassion.

Compassion heals us when we suffer and hurt. It is the balm that steadies us when we are lonely. It soothes us when we are angry.

Compassion is the remedy we need in these unstable and uncertain times.

So, how can we encourage ourselves to generate more of it? It might help to remember these 3 key benefits.

  1. Compassion energizes you. It makes you feel good.

You might have heard of compassion fatigue. It can happen to anyone in a helping profession, and is a common cause of burnout and early retirement.

But here’s the thing: there is no such thing as compassion fatigue.

This is empathy fatigue. Empathy is tiring. It requires you to put yourself in the shoes of others and to take up their feelings as you own. It has a searching and reaching quality to it. It requires effort. Others’ feelings can stay with you and drag you down. This can definitely create exhaustion.

But compassion is different than empathy. While the two feelings often occur together, empathy is tiring, while compassion is not.

Compassion doesn’t sit and marinate in feelings, as empathy does. It has an active quality to it. When we feel compassion, we take the difficult feelings of others and pour sunshine on them. We wish them well. We pray with sincerity. We hope for the best. Compassion is active. This sets it apart from empathy.

Research done in 2013 found that when meditators practiced feeling empathy for others, the brain’s areas for negative feelings were turned on. Empathizing for long periods of time was a struggle. By contrast, when the same meditators were told to practice compassion, it caused the areas of their brains that make dopamine and oxytocin to become more active. There was a positive emotional response that uplifted and energized. Practicing compassion was much easier.

Bottom line: empathy tires. Compassion uplifts.

2. You have an endless supply of compassion. You can’t run out of it.

Many people think that generating compassion is difficult. We fear we won’t have enough of it, so we become stingy, and reserve it only for those closest to us.

But the truth is, you have an endless supply of compassion. It’s an essential part of your being. You can’t run out of it.

You can see this natural capacity for compassion most easily in toddlers. They share easily. They give to others who are sad. They have open and generous hearts.

This is because of the mirror neurons in their brains – in our brains. Humans are profoundly social creatures and we learn by watching and imitating others. It is through these mirror neurons that we see and react to other’s emotions. It is how empathy evolved.

If we want to be happy, we soon learn that the other members of our tribe need to be happy too. So, if someone we know is in pain, we feel a natural compassion for them. We want them to feel better so we can feel better too.

Jack Kornfield is an author and meditation teacher. He describes compassion as a channel within us. Fear, anger, depression, and worthlessness can cover over this channel. They can cloud our ability to show compassion.

But our natural ability for compassion is always there. It sometimes becomes blocked, like the clouds covering a blue sky. But if we can work to keep our hearts open, by caring for others and noticing the beauty of the world around us, then our natural compassion will flow through.

So, please don’t worry about portioning out your compassion. Your heart is rich with it, as long as it remains soft and open.

3. Compassion occurs when love meets pain.

By definition, compassion arises in response to the difficulties of others. This means that, without pain, there can be no compassion. I find this incredibly moving.

Luckily, life has no shortage of pain and difficulty. No one, neither rich nor poor, is exempt from it. This means you can spread your compassion widely to everyone you pass by on the street. You always know it is going to a deserving place because we are all struggling with something.

But this is also why compassion must start with you. Too often, we compare our hurts, thinking that some people deserve more care than others. But there is no ranking system with pain. It just is. A sore heart is a sore heart, no matter the size of the hole within it. This means there is no greater recipient of compassion than you, yourself.

So, be sure to show yourself as much compassion as you can. And know that when you show yourself more compassion, it’s easier to spread it to others.

As you move forward in your life today, please remember these 3 things about compassion:

  1. It can’t tire you.
  2. It’s impossible to run out of it because it is intrinsic to your being, and,
  3. The person most deserving of compassion is yourself. You can travel the whole world and experience pain from all corners. But in the end you will find there is no one more in need of your own compassionate heart than yourself.

Now, go out and be compassionate! Shower compassion on others, but especially on your own tender being. Wish others well. Pray to ease their suffering. Hope that all will understand their own worth. And then, notice how much better you feel.

The world is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Compassion makes it softer. For both yourself and the other hurting souls within your midst.

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The Season of Gratitude – Part 2

Isiwal/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In my last blog post, I wrote about my difficulties feeling gratitude in the past and how allowing myself to feel all the feels opened up some space in my heart, allowing the gratitude to finally move through me.

In this blog post, I’d like to delve a little deeper into all those murky feelings and then talk about choice.

Back in 2010, when I was in the thick of my struggle with CFS, I remember watching an interview with Karen Armstrong. In case you don’t know her, Armstrong is the author of many books on comparative religion, and during this particular interview, she was promoting her latest book (at the time), Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

I was not paying particular attention to what she was saying in this interview until she openly admitted to feeling bitter. Very bitter about life. That got my attention. An expert on religion, and author of a book on compassion, was declaring herself to be bitter? I wanted to know more.

She spoke about her past as a nun in training in Ireland, and about the Superior who was responsible for her. This nun had had a very difficult life, going deaf at an early age, and then being sent to a convent. She happened to be dying of cancer and was in extreme pain, yet she had still spoken kindly to the nuns under her watch. As Armstrong said, “she had trained herself, through all those difficult years not to become bitter, not to think, why me? Why am I deaf? Why am I wasting my life? And as a result, she has remained in me as an icon of what a good person should be”.

And then Armstrong said, “Becoming bitter is always a choice”. In essence, she was saying that life is a road with two very different paths, both equally valid. The decision you make will determine the quality of your life going forward. You can either decide to be bitter and angry about the difficulties and injustice in your life, or you can choose to be compassionate instead.

Her comment really resonated with me because I was slowly coming to the same realization myself. Stuck in bed and unable to accomplish any of my life goals, I was feeling frustrated, angry, and yes, definitely bitter. But I was also realizing that this was not the kind of person I wanted to be.

I think it’s the same with gratitude.

We are living in difficult times. A lot of people are struggling. In many cases, basic needs are not being met. The climate is worsening. Wars are being fought. Everywhere you go, people are suffering. It is very easy to feel hopeless and despondent at the number of crises surrounding us.

It is at these times – often especially at these times – that we realize we have a choice. We can either choose to become bitter, or we can aspire to something a little more noble.

During my years of difficulty, I would often console myself with the beauty of my neighbour’s garden. I may not have had the energy to care for a garden myself, but I felt grateful that I could still enjoy the gardens of others around me.

I became spellbound by the gracefully arching branches of the tree outside my window, watching its many moods as the seasons changed. I may not have been able to spend much time outside, but being able to watch that tree outside my window was a lifeline for me.

I was also deeply consoled by the laughter of the neighbourhood children as they walked past my home on their way to and from school. I may not have been able to see them, but I was grateful for my ability to hear their small voices, and to feel the bubbling energy of their youthful selves.

I know it’s been said before, but it is often when life is at its most bleak, when we are grasping at the smallest example of beauty or kindness, that possibilities for gratitude are fully revealed to us.

This doesn’t mean we don’t also acknowledge our pains and our struggles. It means that, while still feeling our pain in all its fullness, we make the choice to be grateful anyway. It’s a powerful choice. I can’t promise that it will magically make your troubles go away. What I can promise, is that it will make your heart lighter, and your burden easier to bear.