Cultivate Compassion. . .
life (e.g., with your closest friends). Compassion can be thought of as a mental state or an orientation towards suffering (your own or others’) that includes four components:
- Bringing attention or awareness to recognizing that there is suffering (cognitive)
- Feeling emotionally moved by that suffering (affective)
- Wishing there to be relief from that suffering (intentional)
- A readiness to take action to relieve that suffering (motivational)
Contrary to what many may believe, compassion is considered to be like a muscle that, as any other, can be strengthened with relevant exercises—or can deteriorate and atrophy. In other words, your capacity for compassion can expand, if you choose.
You likely never learned in school that you can intentionally strengthen inner skills such as compassion. The good news is that there are specific habits that you can practice in order to begin honing your abilities to expand compassion for yourself and for others.
Move beyond your self-referencing.
From the time we are children, many of us are taught the, “It’s all about me” mentality. But in reality, we are all one. Practice shifting your perspective away from exclusively thinking about how something affects you. This doesn’t mean selling yourself out in order to be nice to someone else — that’s not self-compassion! But it does mean expanding your awareness to make room for the interconnectedness that unites us all.
Practice kindness, without people-pleasing.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, says, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” But many people mistake people-pleasing and approval-seeking with kindness. Kindness doesn’t mean selling out what’s true for you in order to make someone else feel good. Authentic kindness stems from a place of wholeness within, where there is no separation between the giver and the receiver. Whether you’re giving gifts, granting forgiveness, or bestowing love upon someone, true kindness blesses you as much as it does the one you’re serving.
Practice radical self-care.
In order to truly offer compassion to others, you first have to fill yourself. This kind of behavior is not selfish; it’s self-care. Once you tend to your own needs, you can serve others from a place of overflowing love, energy, and abundance. You feel so good that you want to share your bounty with those who can use a little uplifting.
Peace and Love, Jim
#compassion #thedailybuddha
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