Welcome dear Listener! We’re in week 6 of our eight part series covering the 8 C’s of Self-Leadership based on the tool developed by Foundations IFS. Before I forget like last week, here is a link to their pdf. Today I want to focus on Compassion and specifically how do we nurture compassion in ourselves and for others?
Once again being a word nerd makes me search of the word origin to help give greater understanding to the word we’re familiar with today. Compassion has its roots in Latin. com=together; passio=suffer with hence compassion means to suffer together.
Compassion is not feeling sorry for someone’s hardship or calamity. Compassion is suffering alongside. Synonyms for compassion are empathy, kindness, mercy, and sorrow among a list of words to help us understand a fuller meaning of compassion.
How do we nurture compassion for ourselves and for others?
We ask to see. We practice kindness. We show mercy. We feel sorrow.
As a person of faith, we look for examples to follow. We listen for the Voice of Love Who invites us to come close, watch and follow.
To nurture is an active pursuit. As a gardener, I’ll tell you, you get your hands and clothes dirty when you nurture a plant or plants. If you’re a parent you’ve experienced spit up and other messes up close. Nurturing compassion for yourself begins with acknowledging your own messes, missteps, mistakes and misspeaks.
This morning as I was reflecting on nurturing compassion for myself, I wrote this poem:
Do I sense shame lurking at the edge of consciousness?
Why Yes.
Shame, that all too familiar Voice of Condemnation
for my mistakes, missteps, and misspeaks
And yet,
I can choose to acknowledge that too familiar voice and then
Quiet it with Truth.
No place for shame here.
Only the Voice of Love
will prevail.
Instead of allowing the Voice of Shame to be loud, your humility and courage will make room for the Voice of Love to drown out shame. From the practice of honest, heartfelt compassion toward self, you’ll be able to expand your ability to have compassion with others.
Like all growth, awareness is the first step to change. How do we grow awareness? Ask. Over 50 times Jesus is quoted as saying some version of “eyes to see and ears to hear”. Seems important.
Ask. Listen. Practice. Repeat.
Nurturing compassion will cost you. Your selfish nature may die. But like the Grinch or Ebenezer Scrooge your heart will grow. Buy Kleenex.
As always, if you’d like to connect further, hop over to Substack @learning along the way. Please also consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. And please share this episode with a friend or two! This helps others learn to let go, and lean in.
