Compassion Can Change Your Life! Here’s How to Develop It
My journey with compassion really kicked into gear when I was 31.
I was familiar with self compassion by that point, thanks to my office Mindfulness Club. We’d discussed self compassion and done related guided meditations together on multiple occasions. Thanks to the club I understood that self compassion was important, but I didn’t believe it was an area I needed to focus on. I thought I was already quite kind to myself.
What is most memorable about my compassion journey is the moment that I realized I wanted to increase my compassion for others.
I was so angry I couldn’t think straight.
A friend had just confessed to me that she had been hooking up with a guy that I’d recently been involved with. They got involved before either he or I said out loud what we both knew deep down: that the two of us weren’t going anywhere. My mind was spinning out: “How could she do that to me?” “Why couldn’t he respect me enough to officially bring things to a close first?” “WTF were all of our mutual friends going to think about me?” (We had a lot of mutual friends.)
I use quotes above because it is 100% clear now, and was partially clear at the time (when I allowed logic to reside next to the emotions I tried so hard to numb out), that those were just stories I was telling myself. They didn’t reflect the new couple’s thoughts or intentions at all. They felt very real to me at the time, however, and I found them extremely upsetting. “Obviously, they didn’t care about or respect me.” I don’t think I realized until writing this that it triggered my wounds of believing I was unseen and didn’t belong.
The “worst” part of all of this was that we had a big group trip coming up.
I was going to have to be around these two, in front of a bunch of other people, for three days. I didn’t see how I could do that without ripping her head off, and that wouldn’t make me look good. (I could almost understand where he was coming from. The two of us obviously weren’t going anywhere. But “how could she do that to me?!! She didn’t know how I felt about this situation!!”)
For a few days, I couldn’t think about much else. I was almost paralyzed with emotions that I didn’t understand. Logically I knew that neither of them had wronged me. It suddenly seemed likely that she always had feelings for him. She and I hardly knew each other, and while it made no sense for he and I to be together it actually made a lot of sense for the two of them. But my emotions didn't care about any of that logic. I was still f*ing mad.
As the Universe would have it, the guided meditation chosen by the Mindfulness Club while I was going through all of this was “Compassion for Challenging Emotions” by Christina Sian McMahon, Ph.D. (you can find it on the free app Insight Timer). I fell asleep, as I tended to do back then, but came back to it a few days later. I was at work and I wasn’t getting anywhere because the looping thoughts were taking over my mind, so I decided to take a break and do it right then at my desk, surrounded by clear glass walls. Back then, I rarely engaged with difficult emotions, so the risk of being “caught” crying was negligible.
As I allowed my emotions to present themselves I discovered that the anger was just a blanket, masking the really hard feelings underneath. I felt a huge sense of loss and some other emotions that I don’t recall.
What I do vividly remember is the freedom that I began to feel as I invited these emotions up to the surface.
They weren’t quite ready to fly away, as the meditation suggested, but I was able to ACTUALLY FEEL THEM and there was huge power in that. When I let the loss be present the anger no longer sabotaged my mind. Even the loss quickly reduced in intensity.
I knew there was something to this compassion stuff. If anything had the power to enable me to enjoy a group trip with these people, that might be it. I just had to figure out how to develop it.
Have you ever had to choose between learning to tolerate one person or saying goodbye to a bunch of people? Did it require a whole big process or was it easy enough for you to do? It was a whole process for me which I’ll share in a bit, but first let’s get on the same page about what compassion is. (TBH I don’t think I truly understood until looking up the definition to write this article.)
What is compassion?
According to Webster, compassion is “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it”.
I really like the way Kristin Neff (Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at UT Austin, most known for her work on self-compassion) breaks it down. Kristin says:
First, to have compassion for others you must notice that they are suffering. If you ignore that homeless person on the street, you can’t feel compassion for how difficult [their] experience is.
Second, compassion involves feeling moved by others’ suffering so that your heart responds to their pain (the word compassion literally means to “suffer with”). When this occurs, you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way. Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly.
Finally, when you feel compassion for another (rather than mere pity), it means that you realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the shared human experience. “There but for fortune go I.”
Why should we want to develop compassion?
See above! Compassion doesn’t just allow us to relate to others or feel human. It moves us to create change and make the world a better place.
It results in being understanding and kind to others, even when they mess up. If we lived in a world in which everyone was compassionate, people would try harder to be better. That’s one of the outcomes of trusting that you won’t be judged when you mess up.
Compassion also allows us to truly listen to others with the intent to understand. Compassionate communication, done right, results in the other person feeling heard. When they feel heard they are more likely to listen to and understand our feelings, too.
Imagine what could happen if [insert political party, let’s call it “Party A”] Congresspeople were able to see the suffering of “Party B” Congresspeople. Imagine if they developed the capability to see each other as people they could work together with, instead of needing to defend against. Maybe they could come together and solve some of the serious issues facing America, like the fact that we’re running out of food for babies.
Compassion doesn’t just “make us better people”, it improves our own experience as well.
Take the situation I described above. Self-compassion first allowed me to hold my own feelings with love and without judgment. It enabled me to sit with my anger (instead of brushing it away because I “shouldn’t” be angry) and identify the loss and the other emotions below. It then allowed me to comfort and care for those emotions until they felt heard and moved on. (To be honest, I didn’t do this perfectly and discovered a trapped emotion linked to physical pain a couple of years later, but that’s a story for another day.)
Alleviating my own suffering with self-compassion created the space and energy I needed to learn how to develop compassion for others.
That practice allowed me to develop a nonjudgmental (ok, less-judgmental) understanding of the actions I had previously been so angry about. It allowed me to see the other people involved for who they were: human beings with a need for love and connection, just like me. And it enabled me to go on that trip and have a great time (with my own boundaries on how I interacted with those two).
Studies have also shown that compassion for others leads to “proenvironmental tendencies”. Personally, I know that it has led to me using less plastic, picking up more trash (and being less grumpy when I do), and making the decision to stop eating animals and things produced through their harm. When we develop more compassion, everything wins.
How do you become more compassionate?
My “training” began with Mark Coleman’s “Cultivating the Boundless Qualities of the Heart” course on Insight Timer. If you’re into meditation and want to be guided as you cultivate compassion, this is an amazing resource! Instead of completing the 10 lessons in 10 days, I recommend allowing each lesson to sink in before moving on. I’ll walk you through what that looked like for me; this may take more or less time for other people but should work for just about anyone.
I started by deepening my loving awareness before moving into self-love. Then Mark taught me to share and expand my field of love while also cultivating empathy. Eventually came learning to love my enemies, which was my motivation for spending $20 on the course. By the time I got there though, I was starting to realize that I didn’t have enemies at all. And that was just lesson 6!
I believe that the heart of compassion lies in internalizing that everyone else is just like us.
I spent several days with the lesson on “Cultivating Empathy in Daily Life” until I absorbed that all of my loved ones and strangers ARE just like me. Just like me, pretty much everyone wants to be safe, feel loved, and have a comfortable bed to sleep in. Just like me, they probably want to know that their families have what they need to survive. (I may be shifting a little from Mark’s teachings now. It has been a while since I’ve taken the course, but this is how I’ve internalized this lesson.)
After finding that connection with others, the next step is to want the best for them. We can create that desire by wishing good things for them, over and over, until it becomes a natural habit. May they be happy, just like I want to be. May they be safe and secure, and may they know that they are. As I kept this up through a daily meditation practice I began to experience people around me differently. If someone cut me off or snapped at me it didn’t mean that they were a jerk-face who deserved to get in an accident. Just like me, they probably had somewhere they thought they really had to be.
After cultivating this empathy and loving energy with strangers, I moved on to more difficult people. One big one for me was a person I had to work with who was constantly yelling, pretty much called me stupid, and made more than one of my coworkers cry. Just like me, this person had bills to pay. Just like me, they worried about job security. And just like me, they had people they wanted to make proud.
This does not mean that I started to let them run all over me.
It just meant that after a while I was less likely to lose my cool when they started getting fired up. I became less likely to feed their fire, and it tended to fizzle out more quickly. Sometimes that meant treating myself with compassion and removing myself from the situation. Many people worry that if they become compassionate others will walk all over them, but that is not the case.
By the time I moved on to the two people that led me to this journey, it was almost easy to see them as people who deserved love and empathy. My bitterness didn’t immediately disappear, but I was no longer angry. I wanted them to have love and happiness just like I wanted those things for myself, and it no longer mattered to me if they got it from each other.
Not ready to invest in the course? Here are 5 ways you can start to practice building compassion on your own:
Start with self compassion: next time your feelings are hurt, take time to soothe yourself and remind yourself that you’re not the only one who ever felt this way
Every time you have a judgmental thought about someone, pause and think of 2 things you have in common with them
If you have a daily meditation or prayer practice, end it with a few rounds of loving kindness for others
When someone does something that irritates you, try to identify the underlying need/reason that they did that thing
Start taking “connection walks”, focusing on the things you have in common with the people you walk by
Back to the story that started it all…
When it was time for the group trip I was able to have a great time, and didn’t even need to constantly play defense against fragile emotions. I put the boundaries in place that I needed without worrying about what others would think, and I had a blast.
I wouldn’t change anything about that trip or the pain leading up to it. It led to desperation and, ultimately, to so much freedom. It’s funny to think about how much time I used to waste judging others or trying to decide what their actions meant about me.
That’s one of the great “side effects” of compassion. When we view others through a compassionate lens we’re more likely to interpret their actions with love and care. And less likely to waste mental space trying to figure out what’s wrong with us.
I am by no means perfect at compassion.
It’s an ongoing practice, especially communicating compassionately. If you want to dive deeper into that through reading, I can’t recommend Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life enough! I’m currently working through Lucy Leu’s accompanying Nonviolent Communication Companion Workbook with a friend. I truly believe this work has the power to change the world and I can’t wait to see the change it brings about in myself and my interactions. I’ll try to keep y’all posted on how it goes :-)
For those who are new to my work- Hi! I’m Bara. I’m an intuitive life coach who specializes in helping people move to the next level.
Compassion is one of my top values and a primary pillar of my work. So much so that I named my business after it: BaraCo means “Choose Connection, Choose Compassion, Choose Conscious Awareness”. (For a better understanding of how I came to that, check out my very first blog on this site.)
If you’re tired of feeling stuck, are ready to climb to your next level, and like my vibe, book a discovery call today. Let’s discover if I’m the right coach to support you.
