Why Compassion is the Foundation for Self-Love
We often hear the term, “please be compassionate with yourself”, but why is it important? Let’s delve deeper into this
What is compassion really?
The dictionary defines it as “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.”
Compassion means to share unconditional love with those in their ecosystem, and create opportunities to alleviate the distress or sadness of others. When we have compassion, this becomes the foundation for our emotional and mental health. Why? Because we learn to accept our whole self, the self that is perfectly imperfect. Instead of feeling discouraged and boxed in, compassion sets us free by moving through the phrases we often say to ourselves, including: “yea, I made a mistake” or “yea, I could’ve done better”, but instead say, “I tried my best”, and “While that didn’t go as expected, I can learn from this experience”. What I love about compassion is that it creates this shift from a stuck and fearful place into an energy of grace and warmth. With compassion, we can deeply listen to our own suffering and grant kindness by extending an olive branch to move through and move forward.
Does Compassion Mean we have to give up everything to help someone else?
Please don’t! The first step of compassion is the have compassion for yourself and your own suffering. Oftentimes, we extend ourselves to others, but the first person that we need to be there for is ourselves. This explains why in the Buddhist practice of the Loving Kindness Meditation, the ethos is to send Compassion and Loving Kindness to yourself first. Subsequently, expanding that Compassion and Loving Kindness to others. Please remember compassion is not the same thing as empathy. Empathy is experiencing another person’s emotions as if they were your own emotions.
How do we actually practice compassion?
Sometimes we confuse having compassion for others as these grand gestures, but oftentimes, compassion grows from the little things in daily life. Two ways to practice compassion include:
1. Loving Kindness Meditation
In this beautiful practice, the practitioner is guided to repeat the phrases, “May I Be Happy, May I Be Healthy, May I Be Peaceful, and May I Be Filled with Loving Kindness”. And then these phrases are expanded to loved ones, and people you encounter daily who you might not interact with often, but have been there to support you in some form (e.g. a security guard, bus driver, or supermarket clerk). This practice helps us to cultivate compassion, acceptance and ultimate self-love.
Listen to the Loving Kindness Meditation I recorded on Insight Timer by clicking on this link: https://insighttimer.com/yinki/guided-meditations/loving-kindness-meditation-177
2. Embracing Yourself (Not Just the Parts You Want to See, but the Parts that You Don’t Want to too)
When we lack compassion, we often are rejecting ourselves - our dreams, our passions, our self-care, and our own kindness. When we practice forgiving our past mistakes and learn from them we step into knowing who we are more fully. All of our shortcomings are what make us who we are, our beautiful selves.
Thank you for reading this! I want to acknowledge the roots of compassion teachings which all stem from Buddhism. I will dive into how I relate to religion and spirituality, but right now where I stand is that these Buddhist ethos are woven into my Cantonese culture. I honour these practices to also honour my ancestors and to practice decolonising spirituality. I’m writing this on the first birthday (she has three), of the goddess and bodhisattva Guan Yin. I see her as my spirit guide, my matriarch and ether mother.
I wish you all the loving kindness today <3