Compassion must go beyond empathy to stay true to its meaning
Compassion may get confused with empathy but they are truly distinct. While in empathy a person does feel another person’s emotions, in compassion it goes to another level where a tendency to help starts to show from within. People with compassion reflect a motivation in themselves to relieve pain of many forms such as physical, social, emotional, or mental. Compassionate people will suffer alongside you and help find a way to resolve the pain at hand.
Where the true knowledge lies is in establishing a strong compassion for yourself. While it may not always be common to find people who are compassionate, the odds are slimmer in finding people who are self-compassionate. This is important because it helps build stronger, healthier walls of everyone’s mind palace (shout out Sherlock Holmes, specifically the TV Sherlock series featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as they personify a mind palace). For the sake of simplicity, a mind palace can be viewed as a home base represented by a location that reflects your current state of mind. For example, a mind palace could be your childhood bedroom where the wallpaper represents your mood and the items in your room are what you are focused on lately in your life. Each person’s mind palace is different and unique but they all need strong walls to hold up the room and fend off negativity. A mind palace could also be in bad shape and work against you when going through rough patches in life. While there are many ideas that can keep your walls strong, self-compassion is overlooked as a powerful one.
When you fail, suffer, or are “not enough”, the warm wave that should follow is compassion because you are human, imperfect, and are allowed to acknowledge what you feel. While the obvious is to support others as they lean on you, the less obvious is to support yourself too. Doing so allows you to jump back after getting knocked down or hitting the reset button when you have an off day. Remember to remind yourself of self-compassion with the first step being to create awareness that it exists. Making an effort to become aware of indirect feelings and experiences, such as googling what compassion means, will fortify your mind palace walls as you preserve your peace throughout your life.
Being consistently kind to yourself needs no permission or approval from anything or anyone. It should be promised with the same guarantee that comes with time moving forward.
<_-^-_ Temet Nosce ^ Nosce Te Ipsum ^ Know Thyself _-^-_>
