We live in such a busy world. And then, suddenly, it stopped on a dime. Now, as we emerge from the pandemic are excited to get back into doing things again. We learned a lot about taking care of ourselves and what our priorities are when we were all at home. But, as we jump back into activities again, self-care may fall by the wayside, our schedules will fill up again, and worst of all, compassion will become an oft-neglected luxury not a necessity. 

The Benefits of Compassion

    Compassion boosts your health and well-being. There are many benefits to taking on being compassionate both for yourself and, equally as important, for others.

• For Yourself
  You feel good about yourself.
  You exude more confidence.
  You have a softer, gentler, kinder demeanor.
  You attract more positive people, situations, and experiences in your life.
  Your health improvement brings more energy, better sleep, and life experiences.
  
  
• For Others
  You are a contribution to others when you show compassion.
  You let them know they are not alone.
  Other people reap the rewards of feeling related, understood, and full of hope.
  Others who are equally kind and compassionate will draw near to you.
  You become a role model for others on how to treat themselves.
  You become a role model for others on how to improve their relationships.
  You create a ripple of compassion, that positively affects many people.

How Being More Compassionate Changes Your Life

    Being Compassionate to yourself as a new way of being brings improvement to many areas of your life. When you are compassionate to yourself, you reap the benefits and the rewards. 
    Self-Compassion allows you the opportunity to take care of your own needs in being kind and gentle to yourself when you fall short. As humans, we all fall short; sometimes we do not reach our goal, sometimes the actions of others impact us negatively. We make mistakes, forget things, lose our cool, and overreact. We are human. Understanding the basic fact that we are human allows us to be kind and compassionate and ask ourselves what we learned from experience.
    Being compassionate to ourselves is a better use of energy. Imagine the time and trouble it takes to feed a negative mindset in reaction to a mistake. We can, instead, take time to self-soothe. Self-soothing is shown to have many benefits. We can move forward more quickly rather than ruminating on our mistakes. We can learn and grow and keep moving forward – the real definition of life. 
    More importantly, when we show ourselves compassion, we train others to do the same. If we beat ourselves up, we are basically giving others permission to do the same. When we show ourselves compassion, we model how we expect others to treat us, as well. 

The Impact of Compassion on Your Relationships

    While we are all interested in changing and improving our lives for the better, what about the impact compassion has on our relationships? Navigating through life means taking responsibility for our actions; however, we are also navigating many relationships within families, work, and socially. 
    Showing compassion offers us the opportunity to make a difference in someone else’s life. People need to know we understand and that we are there for them. Loving and supporting others is the catalyst for helping them through the rough patches of life. What is better than being a contributing factor to changing the direction of someone else’s life? Now that is powerful!
    When we offer compassion to others, we feel good about ourselves and make a difference to them. It is a win/win situation. Make it a goal to practice compassion for yourselves and others every day.

Your Partner In Spiritual Health,
Melissa