Mind Matters 🙏🏽 (#004)

Hello friends, 👋🏽

Welcome to another edition of Mind Over Matter.

Today, I was thinking about a topic that I believe is important to our daily lives but seems to fly under the radar quite often.  

Compassion is a word that gets thrown around a lot.

But what does it really mean?

When we talk about compassion, we're talking about understanding and relating to the feelings and circumstances of others. It's having the capacity to feel empathy for other people and their situations.

Compassion is often manifested as a feeling of deep sympathy for another being or group. It doesn't just mean feeling bad for someone when they're having a hard time but trying to relate to their position.

It's actually a feeling that we innately possess for others. The most common method is by thinking about how we would feel if we were in somebody else's shoes. When we do this, we're able to see things from other perspectives, which can help us to understand and empathise with people who are different from us. Compassion also gives us a feeling of connectedness to others around us despite whatever differences we may have.

In society, there is a lot of division between people and groups that don't agree with one another. This kind of division leads to conflict, which causes tension on many levels. We need compassion so that we can see each other as equals and understand that we all have similar needs for the smaller and larger things in life.

Compassion is an important part of being human. It's something we should all strive to practice because when we're compassionate, it makes us feel good and it helps other people feel good too. In fact, there's a scientific reasoning behind this.

When you think about someone else and want them to be happy, your brain releases oxytocin—a hormone that helps you feel close to others. But this also works to make you feel happy too. So when you think about someone else and try to help them, your brain releases oxytocin, which makes you feel good in turn.

Consequently, the other party will feel good about you helping too, so compassion almost works like a chain reaction. You do something kind for someone else, which makes them feel better.

We should always strive to be compassionate toward others, whether they're strangers or people we know well because compassion isn't just about the other person; it's also about us.

Compassion helps us become better people ourselves by providing us with an opportunity to practice empathy and kindness toward others. It allows us to see situations from another perspective, which gives us insight into how others might be feeling and thinking, which in turn helps us relate more deeply with others and better understand ourselves as well.

When we're compassionate towards other people, it makes us more likely to act kindly towards them and less likely to judge them harshly or assume anything about them based on their appearance or their actions alone. Compassion helps us see the humanity in everyone else, and that means acknowledging it in ourselves too.

It's important to note that compassion doesn't mean that we necessarily agree with the other side. It simply means that we're making a conscious effort to understand where they're coming from, despite our differences. There's no obligation on you to adopt a viewpoint that you may disagree with. However, the act of sincerely demonstrating respect and understanding for others is a noble undertaking that rarely has any downside to it.

Compassion is very important in order to build a conscious world around us. Try to use it in a conversation today. Suspend your beliefs and opinions briefly, give all of your attention to the other party, listen attentively and then try to rationalise their position as if you were standing in their shoes.

Try it.

You may just make a new friend today.

I'll leave you with the thought that whatever you attempt to do this week, try to do it mindfully and without too much overthinking.

Remember, you can always find another excuse to delay what you know would be good for you. We have the ability to draw from an unlimited supply of excuses within all of us.

Luckily, the same also applies to motivation. 🏆

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Until next time, friends. 👋🏽

Namaste 🙏🏽