Students in my compassion training classes receive a workbook, which contains a daily practice log and space for comments. It is only with reflection that we can get a sense of whether these practices are actually benefitting us immediately or in the longer-term.
This allows us to continue the routine of logging and reflecting and also allows us to examine patterns to the days where we are not practicing—perhaps what we are choosing to do instead of meditating is a higher priority, or perhaps what we are doing instead is not actually adding value to our lives. Running this experiment does not require a workbook, purchasing a fancy meditation cushion, or buying trendy new yoga clothes. These practices, which are thousands of years old, can be done right in the comfort of your own home, at the office, in your car, or really anywhere, just as you are.
Afterward, reflection can take many forms—and you should adopt one that works for you. In my experience as a meditation student and as a meditation teacher, the practices are initially helpful when done with the guidance of an instructor.
The instructor can answer questions, help troubleshoot and problem-solve, and, most importantly, help you stick with and come back to your practice. This notion can get lost at times when doing these practices in solitude. You might find support at a religious community or center in your area, if you have one. There are lots of good reasons why sometimes we intend to do compassion meditation practices, and yet, for whatever reason, we drop the ball.
Additionally, one of the interesting opportunities that arises when we do not do our compassion meditation practices is to see if, in that moment, we can practice compassion for ourselves. It is important to notice whether we are bringing any expectations to the compassion practice. While relaxation and stress relief can be the goal of some meditations, in general this is not the case with compassion meditation. Being human is a good starting point.
But from there, biases are impossible to avoid. A natural disaster that displaces people from your home country hits a lot closer to home. It feels more relevant, even if everyone affected is a complete stranger. Objectively, the distress or suffering is the same, yet the relationship changes your emotional response. Plus, empathy is unfeasible in the long term. So what makes compassion different? Unlike empathy, compassion creates emotional distance from the individual and situation.
By practicing compassion , we can become more resilient and improve our overall well-being. In fact, a study from Emory University showed promising results.
Medical students with stressful and challenging work environments benefited greatly from compassion training. Not all human instincts are rooted in goodwill and compassion. But you have the power to rise above that. The statement had a profound effect on Weiner. He told an audience at Wisdom 2. He says the natural response many people have when they disagree with someone is to get angry and defensive. With compassionate management, a leader can detach herself from her emotions and thoughts.
Instead of reacting on autopilot, she can go beyond the feeling and manage an appropriate response. In a sense, true compassion is about going beyond emotion or rationalization and being kind regardless. As a leader, both empathetic leadership and compassionate leadership are crucial. They have proven effects on employee happiness, retention, and overall well-being. The world is constantly evolving. In the new workplace, people on your teams are facing more ambiguity in day-to-day tasks.
They also feel the pressure to keep up with changes in their personal and professional lives. Having empathy as a starting point sets the tone for the entire team.
You should recognize that everyone is human. Accept that all employees and customers have a life outside work. Remember that they have lives full of concerns and stressors that you don't see. Practice empathy to unlock new insights into how better to serve customers and peers. Empathy lets the leader model practices such as assuming good intentions and focusing on behaviors and actions. Research by APS Fellow Jean Decety, at the University of Chicago, showed that even rats are driven to empathize with another suffering rat and to go out of their way to help it out of its quandary.
Studies with chimpanzees and human infants too young to have learned the rules of politeness, also back up these claims. Michael Tomasello and other scientists at the Max Planck Institute, in Germany, have found that infants and chimpanzees spontaneously engage in helpful behavior and will even overcome obstacles to do so.
They apparently do so from intrinsic motivation without expectation of reward. It appears to be the alleviation of suffering that brings reward — whether or not they engage in the helping behavior themselves. It is not surprising that compassion is a natural tendency since it is essential for human survival. Without it, the survival and flourishing of our species would have been unlikely.
One more sign that suggests that compassion is an adaptively evolved trait is that it makes us more attractive to potential mates. Compassion may have ensured our survival because of its tremendous benefits for both physical and mental health and overall well-being. Research by APS William James Fellow Ed Diener, a leading researcher in positive psychology, and APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Martin Seligman, a pioneer of the psychology of happiness and human flourishing, suggests that connecting with others in a meaningful way helps us enjoy better mental and physical health and speeds up recovery from disease; furthermore, research by Stephanie Brown, at Stony Brook University, and Sara Konrath, at the University of Michigan, has shown that it may even lengthen our life spans.
The reason a compassionate lifestyle leads to greater psychological well-being may be explained by the fact that the act of giving appears to be as pleasurable, if not more so, as the act of receiving. Giving to others even increases well-being above and beyond what we experience when we spend money on ourselves. In a revealing experiment by Elizabeth Dunn, at the University of British Columbia, participants received a sum of money and half of the participants were instructed to spend the money on themselves; the other half was told to spend the money on others.
At the end of the study, which was published in the academic journal Science, participants who had spent money on others felt significantly happier than those who had spent money on themselves. This is true even for infants. Even more surprisingly, the fact that giving makes us happier than receiving is true across the world, regardless of whether countries are rich or poor. A new study by Aknin, now at Simon Fraser University, shows that the amount of money spent on others rather than for personal benefit and personal well-being were highly correlated, regardless of income, social support, perceived freedom, and perceived national corruption.
Why does compassion lead to health benefits in particular? We might expect that inflammation would be lower for people with higher levels of happiness. A life of meaning and purpose is one focused less on satisfying oneself and more on others. It is a life rich in compassion, altruism, and greater meaning. Another way in which a compassionate lifestyle may improve longevity is that it may serve as a buffer against stress.
One of the reasons that compassion may protect against stress is the very fact that it is so pleasurable. Motivation, however, seems to play an important role in predicting whether a compassionate lifestyle exerts a beneficial impact on health. Sara Konrath, at the University of Michigan, discovered that people who engaged in volunteerism lived longer than their non-volunteering peers — but only if their reasons for volunteering were altruistic rather than self-serving.
Another reason compassion may boost our well-being is that it can help broaden our perspective beyond ourselves. If you recall a time you were feeling blue and suddenly a close friend or relative calls you for urgent help with a problem, you may remember that as your attention shifts to helping them, your mood lifts.
Rather than feeling blue, you may have felt energized to help; before you knew it, you may even have felt better and gained some perspective on your own situation as well. Finally, one additional way in which compassion may boost our well-being is by increasing a sense of connection to others. One telling study showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure. On the flip side, strong social connection leads to a 50 percent increased chance of longevity.
Social connection strengthens our immune system research by Cole shows that genes impacted by social connection also code for immune function and inflammation , helps us recover from disease faster, and may even lengthen our life. People who feel more connected to others have lower rates of anxiety and depression. Moreover, studies show that they also have higher self-esteem, are more empathic to others, more trusting and cooperative and, as a consequence, others are more open to trusting and cooperating with them.
Social connectedness therefore generates a positive feedback loop of social, emotional, and physical well-being. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true for those who lack social connectedness.
Low social connection has been generally associated with declines in physical and psychological health, as well as a higher propensity for antisocial behavior that leads to further isolation. Adopting a compassionate lifestyle or cultivating compassion may help boost social connection and improve physical and psychological health. Indeed, compassion is contagious. Social scientists James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard demonstrated that helping is contagious: acts of generosity and kindness beget more generosity in a chain reaction of goodness.
You may have seen one of the news reports about chain reactions that occur when someone pays for the coffee of the drivers behind them at a drive-through restaurant or at a highway tollbooth. People keep the generous behavior going for hours. Our acts of compassion uplift others and make them happy.
We may not know it, but by uplifting others we are also helping ourselves; research by Fowler and Christakis has shown that happiness spreads and that if the people around us are happy, we, in turn become happier. Although compassion appears to be a naturally evolved instinct, it sometimes helps to receive some training.
Cultivating compassion does not require years of study and can be elicited quite rapidly. In a study Cendri Hutcherson, at the California Institute of Technology, and I conducted in with APS Fellow James Gross at Stanford, we found that a seven-minute intervention was enough to increase feelings of closeness and connection to the target of meditation on both explicit measures, but also on implicit measures that participants could not voluntarily control; this suggests that their sense of connection had changed on a deep-seated level.
Fredrickson tested a nine-week loving-kindness meditation intervention and found that the participants who went through the intervention experienced increased daily positive emotions, reduced depressive symptoms, and increased life satisfaction.
A group led by Sheethal Reddy at Emory with foster children showed that a compassion intervention increased hopefulness in the children.
They also show empathy to others. While these qualities might seem obvious, there is a lot more that goes into being compassionate.
Read on for 11 characteristics of compassionate people! Being compassionate means that you are aware of the feelings and thoughts of not only yourself but those around you. Being compassionate also means accepting there is no judgment — we all have flaws, which makes us more understanding towards each other rather than less compassionate. Being a compassionate person also requires responsiveness: when someone is in need of help, compassionate people are quick to respond.
They recognize that life is difficult and we can all use a helping hand sometimes — which requires open communication with others.
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