Practicing Self-Compassion Day 4
How Compassion For Others Increases Compassion For Oneself
One of the main parts of self-compassion is the concept of common humanity. Common humanity acknowledges that we all experience discomfort, pain and suffering at times.
To connect with this concept, we can spend our time helping others. When we spend time helping people with their struggles, we tend to see that we're not alone with ours.
Even if the people we help do not share the specific issues that we're dealing with, we tend to get a sense that we all go through difficulties in life. That we're all in this together. We then get a sense of connection with other people. We also become more understanding of ourselves and others better. Source
Some Activities That Help Connect With Common Humanity
If we're experiencing a challenging situation, we can seek out others who are experiencing the same. For example, if we are raising a child with a health problem, we might want to spend time with a support group of parents raising children with the same health problem. If we're experiencing social anxiety, we can join a social anxiety support group with a therapist or a coach as a guide.
We can also help others who don't share our challenges. For example, we could volunteer in a homeless shelter, distribute goods to victims of catastrophes or help build houses.
Another thing we could do to connect with the concept of common humanity is to ask ourselves during times of distress if we really are the only ones who are experiencing what we're going through at the time. If we answer this question honestly, we'll know that this isn't true. Very likely at the same moment, a lot of people are experiencing something similar.
How I Practiced Self-Compassion Today
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I practiced a form of loving-kindness meditation today. Loving-kindness meditation is a kind of meditation where we say wishes to ourselves and others. We say things like "May we be happy. May we be healthy. May we have peace." There are studies showing the benefits of this kind of meditation. You can read them here: https://emmaseppala.com/18-science-based-reasons-try-loving-kindness-meditation-today/
I have been practicing this for a while but I got an idea from @metama, who replied to my previous post, to put a twist on it. He said that does a simple meditation where he tries to feel love for himself while feeling himself receiving the love he is putting out.
As I meditated and uttered a wish like "May we be happy," I imagined the energy of the wish coming from my center. I then visualized this energy overflowing from me and getting stronger. I then directed the excess energy to all the people in the world. I did this for all the wishes I practice with. I focused on the feelings and sensations I felt while I was doing this and it felt great.
I hope something in this post was useful to you.
The information in this post is not meant to replace therapy. If you need help in dealing with your thoughts and feelings, please consult with a licensed professional.
Please check my previous post:
Practicing Self-Compassion Day 3
May you have a meaningful life.
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I so agree. Our society, and far too many families, tend to shame us and make us feel less than, so it is vitally important to be kind and loving - and forgiving - to ourselves, as if we cannot love ourselves fully, it severely limits the love we can show to those most important in our lives.
Wonderful post. I have no doubt it will help many others. Thank you.
We do need to love ourselves fully so that we can fully love others as well. Thank you.
You're welcome!
That's right, you get to learn how to cultivate empathy from there as well. That's something necessary especially in life. Think this should be made more apparent in education systems, great post by the way.
Hi @alvinauh. Thanks. You do cultivate empathy as well by practicing compassion for others. I also think it would be helpful if it were practiced in educational institutions. It is being practiced in some universities in the US like Stanford University. You can check it out here: http://ccare.stanford.edu/stanford-compassionate-university-project/