Are you a compassionate person? Find out below!

What is compassion and why do you need it?

by Wendy Keller, blogger, ruminator

Who is the #1 person you probably forget to be compassionate with? Yourself.

The Dalai Lama wrote:

“The foundation of the Buddha’s teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of the ego, the number one enemy of compassion.”

When your ego tells you that you “should” be richer, happier, healthier, thinner, more peaceful, more or less of anything, you are lacking in compassion for yourself.

When your ego tells you that someone else should or shouldn’t be something, you are lacking in compassion for others.

Even in the case of our closest friends and family, we really don’t fully know what they’re going through nor how they’re handling things we ourselves may be going through, too. I noticed when my children died in a car accident that the way my then-husband grieved was completely different than the way I was handling the same tragedy.

Let other people be &  love yourself.

That’s all there is to it.

You can tell how compassionate you are by listening to your inner voice.  If you run a constant string of criticism with the rest of the world, or yourself, you are lacking in compassion.

So how do you CREATE compassion?

Increasing your compassion can start with three simple (but not easy) steps:

1) Decide to be more compassionate with yourself and all other beings – people and animals

2) Notice your inner and outer words

3) If you say something unkind in your head or aloud to yourself or another person, immediately change it – retract it, apologize, stop talking.

In these ways, you will increase your compassion and with it your own inner peace of mind.

If you’re going through a painful time in your life, please help yourself to a copy of my free eBook “The Top Ten Tips to Coping With Crisis”