Feel More Compassion and Understand Empathy With Mindfulness
How often does your heart soak in the joy of good-feeling emotions like love, gratitude, and fulfillment? Once in a blue moon? For many of us, stress and tension feel more “normal” than these heart-opening emotions. But by cultivating compassion for ourselves and others, we can train our mind to feel great more often.
It’s been said that what you practice gets stronger. This applies to the way you feel about yourself and others. When you experience emotions that don’t feel so good – like anger, guilt, shame, blame, or depression - you practice these emotions.
When you learn to feel a greater sense of compassion for yourself and others, you’ll notice things transforming in your life. People will treat you better, with more respect and appreciation. It’s not that they changed. These shifts happen because of the changes you made within yourself first.
So let’s explore why cultivating compassion and self-compassion is so important to your well-being and how it can help you.
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” - Dalai Lama
The difference between empathy and compassion
So what exactly is compassion? Compassion is feeling the pain of others and truly wanting to help them alleviate this pain. Not out of a sense of pity, but out of a true sense of caring for their well-being. When we apply that same feeling of care and concern toward ourselves, it’s called self-compassion (which is just as important).
While empathy and compassion might sound similar, they’re different. Empathy is when you’re able to feel someone’s feelings. Maybe your best friend just lost a parent and you can feel their pain and grief as you talk to them…that’s empathy. But when you also couple that with a sense of compassion, you have a sincere desire to help them feel better.
If you’re around others who are going through emotional or physical pain (perhaps if you’re a caretaker or care for others in your work), you may occasionally experience empathetic distress. Also known as compassion fatigue, this is when we care for others to a point of setting our own mental and emotional well-being aside. The key to not feeling drained from helping others is balance. It’s in taking good care of yourself every day so that you can bring your full joy and energy into helping others too. Here are some Stress Management Products in the Pure Life Energy Amazon Store that can help you when you experience compassion fatigue.
The biology of why compassion is good for you
We’re hardwired with the instinct to care for ourselves and others. That’s why our brain rewards us with the good-feeling hormone oxytocin when we put compassion into action.
As we care for someone in a kind way, such as offering a tender caress, oxytocin is released. Research shows that we also experience this boost of oxytocin when we do something to soothe our own pain.
Compassion strengthens the connection between the prefrontal cortex (the seat of our higher-order reasoning) and the emotional center of the brain. This helps us increase emotional intelligence and activates the feelings of love, joy, and connection.
It’s worth considering the evolutionary reason behind our sense of compassion. As humanity, we advance much farther and much faster when we work together. As we see the goodness in ourselves and in the people around us, we’re more likely to evoke the inner strengths within them – and within us to create a better world together.
How mindfulness helps you cultivate compassion
Research shows that mindfulness significantly improves your sense of compassion for yourself and others. How? Through increasing your awareness of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that drive your actions.
Mindfulness helps you become more conscious of times when your mind is stuck in patterns that are not compassionate to yourself or others. Perhaps because you’re (unconsciously) ruminating on thoughts of blame, shame, or guilt. As you objectively recognize the presence of these emotions, you create a space from which you can change them.
With practice, you can choose to focus on emotions that make you feel good such as gratitude, joy, and compassion. Meditation is a great opportunity to intentionally practice feeling these emotions and get your brain used to them. This then makes it easier to bring them up throughout the day regardless of what goes on outside of you. Experience the Heart Centered Guided Mindfulness Meditation for Self Compassion and begin to plant the seeds of Self Care in your heart.
Compassion for the “difficult” people in your life
It’s easy to feel compassion for someone who treats you well or even for strangers or animals. But the real test of our ability to feel compassion starts with changing our relationship to the “difficult” people in our lives.
Is there someone in your life who stirs up negative feelings within you? Bring that person to mind.
Can you put yourself in their shoes? How well do you know their history and what might be causing them to behave in less than loving ways towards you? Can you consider that perhaps this person is doing their best given what they know?
Just like you, they also want to be happy.
Just like you, they may have their own struggles.
Just like you, they also feel stress and anxiety sometimes.
See if you can focus on that person’s strengths. Can you embrace them for the fullness of who they are? Can you imagine how seeing them in this way could inspire the best in them? Just give it a try and see what it feels like to feel compassion warming your heart. The Loving Kindness Meditation can help to generate compassion for others.
“It never hurts to see the good in someone. They often act the better because of it.” - Nelson Mandela
What is self-compassion? And how to cultivate it?
Self-compassion means giving yourself the same level of care, respect, and loving attention that you’d give to someone you love. Doing this builds your level of self-trust, resilience, and confidence.
Practicing mindfulness makes self-compassion easier. It makes you more aware that the voice of the inner critic is not who you are. You are the one who gets to decide how you’ll respond to that voice. Meditation opens you up to a space from which you can choose how you talk to yourself: like your best friend rather than your greatest enemy.
Doing some deep reflection can help you understand why you’re hard on yourself. Perhaps your parents had high expectations of you or rarely gave you praise. Or maybe you’re worried whether you can achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself. The Journal For New Beginnings can be a wonderful aid to help you explore your deep reflection.
Whatever it is, recognize that you’re worthy, lovable, and amazing just as you are. Imagine what it may feel like to embrace yourself for the fullness of everything you have already become. Focus on the good within you and soon you’ll notice opportunities to use it to create even more greatness in your life.
“The beauty of self-compassion is that instead of replacing negative feelings with positive ones, new positive emotions are generated by embracing the negative ones. The positive emotions of care and connectedness are felt alongside our painful feelings. When we have compassion for ourselves, sunshine and shadow are both experienced simultaneously.” - Kristin Neff
Cultivating a more compassionate relationship with yourself takes practice. So if you want some practical ways to practice this loving attitude towards yourself, you’ll love our Stress Management Program. From learning to meditate and give yourself self-massage, to dealing with burnout and becoming your own best friend, you’ll walk away a much happier you. Click here for a free consultation!
