Saturday, June 19, 2021 (Day 170)
Relaxing Music for the week: Oneness: Liquid Mind (8:13) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdKx9Sn-11k
Question: How compassionate do you think you are towards other people in your life? Do you extend that compassion to yourself?
Answer: The Greater Good Science Center (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/) out of the University of California-Berkeley defines compassion – it literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. In that sense of the definition, then I am not compassionate towards other people nor towards myself. A better word would be empathy, describe “as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.” So I would say that I’m more empathetic than compassionate, but I’m one of those people that will not wallow with you in your suffering. I will provide support in listening, but then it’s time to pull-up our undies and do something about it. Life is always going to throw curve balls at us, testing our abilities and our mettle. When someone dies, there’s a time to grieve, but then there’s has to be a time to move forward. When something bad happens, suffer with it but don’t dwell on it. At some point (a really short time period), it’s time to let it go and move on. This is one of those things I’m learning as I’m getting older; plus, I remember an interview with Marie Forleo and Tony Robbins addressing suffering, then reading Jack Canfield’s “The Success Principles” first chapter, Take 100% personal responsibility for your life. In his book, he uses the formula E + R = O, where E = Event, R = Response, and O = Outcome. Shitty stuff happens (E); if we respond (R) in a shitty way, we typically get a pretty shitty outcome (O). However, if another shitty thing happens, we can respond in a positive/pro-active way and get a different, most likely positive, outcome. Everything is dependent on our response, which means everything is a choice we get to make. Choose a crappy response, most likely a crappy result. Choose a positive response, most likely either a less crappy result or a positive result. As far as extending compassion to myself…that’s always a hard one, but I’m getting much better at it. I’m very hard on myself, having great expectations for what I want to be and what I want to do. It’s not always going to work out for the best, but at least if I take a proactive (instead of reactive) approach, I can have some control over what happens to me in the end.
The Dream Dean 