Connecting With Compassion

A compassionate life is one that requires both softness and strength. By cultivating compassion towards yourself and others, you can embrace life’s trials and tribulations with a strong back and soft front.

- Ally Mcmanus

“The energy of compassion is very strong.” ~ Thích Nhat Hanh

The human existence is filled with a mix of light and dark, joy and pain, yang and yin. Challenges in life are inevitable, but the degree to which you suffer as a result of these trials and tribulations is up to you. One tool to draw on to move through life with more ease, understanding and acceptance is compassion, which involves acknowledging with kindness that all lives are just as important, sacred and of value as your own.

Paul Gilbert, the founder of CompassionFocused Therapy, defines compassion as “a basic kindness, with a deep awareness of the suffering of oneself and of other living things, coupled with the wish and effort to relieve it.” But this desire to relieve one’s suffering doesn’t mean fixing or removing anything. Rather, it’s holding someone’s pain with tenderness, as if it’s our own.

Jad Patrick, a Melbourne-based naturopath, counsellor and mindful self-compassion teacher (instagram. com/jadpatricknaturopathy), describes the motivational nature underpinning compassion. “A lot of people think that compassion is an emotional state, but really compassion is a motivational state,” he explains. “Compassion comes from the Latin ‘to be with’ — to be with pain, and we’ve got to feel a motivation to do something about the suffering. That could take the form of action — stepping in and helping, or it could take the form of offering kindness — being with the suffering, as opposed to ignoring it or telling someone to get over it.”

Understanding self-compassion