Tag: Compassion

Reducing The Suffering Of Others

Happiness, Health, Relationships

Naturally in life we don’t want to see other people suffer. However, we often go about the world interacting with others from our own point of view. We think about things in terms of how they impact us. This can cause us to be reactive to life’s events, asking ‘Why have they done this to me?’, for example. A better question to ask is ‘Why did they do that?’ This moves the thinking from us to them and allows us to consider the reason the other person is behaving the way they are.

Hurt people hurt people. So if someone hurts you with their words or their actions it is an indication that they are suffering, and rather than becoming reactive and trying to hurt them back, we could be compassionate and empathetic. This diffuses the situation and creates a space to helps the other person to heal. We will heal a little too.

If we reframe how we see our interactions with others and move from ‘How can I make things better for me?’ to ‘How can I reduce their suffering?’, then your relationships will improve and life will become more fulfilling.

The Emptiness Of Compassion

Happiness, Health, Relationships

When we think of compassion we think of sympathising with those who are suffering in some way. This relationship with the person who is suffering is one with a them and a me, which has an innate division. In Buddhism compassion is very important, as is the concept of emptiness, which is essentially that all things are empty of labels, characteristics and preferences, to put it simply.

Compassion, in its best form, is one where there is no division between yourself and others; there is an innate unity. This would mean that the compassion you feel is for the suffering of another living being and the wish to end this suffering, because you see no difference between them and you. This is the kind of compassion I would advocate for, the kind that has no divisions, only an understanding of the suffering of others and the wish to end it.

Finding Your Purpose

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I recently watched an interview with Jay Shetty where he talked about his formula for finding your Purpose. 

Your Passion
+
Your Strengths
+
Compassion
=
Your Purpose

This seems like a good balance of ideas in order to find Purpose. Your Purpose does have to include what you are passionate about, but if you focus on things that are not your strengths, then you won’t get very far. The inclusion of compassion ensures the Purpose you have is not a selfish one. We thrive more if we are focused on helping others, it is how we are wired.

Heal Yourself With Compassion

Happiness, Health, The Pathway To Fulfilment

We treat anger, depression and other negative states of being as things to remove or reject, but sometimes they are valid feelings and sometimes we are in the middle of experiencing such feelings and it can be hard to know what to do.

Try treating these feelings with compassion. Think of them in the same way that you would a small child. You wouldn’t reject a child for being upset or angry, you would cuddle and care for the child and help them move through the negative feelings into happier ones.

There is always a reason we feel angry or depressed. If we approach these feelings with compassion we can discover the root cause and heal it.

Monday Blues

Happiness, Success

We often feel a sense of dread on Sundays, fearing what Monday might bring and we wish the week away, so we can enjoy the weekend, when it arrives. This push and pull that we self impose can cause us a lot of unnecessary stress. Our attitude to the working week largely comes from whether we are fulfilled by our job or not, but we are influenced by the cultural mindset that Mondays are bad and Friday evening and the weekend are good. We often think Thank God It’s Friday.

This way of looking at our working week is self defeating and can easily be avoided. As Viktor E. Frankl said in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” We have control over our attitude and the things we tell ourselves about the work we do and how we spend our time. We can look on the bright side, as they say.

I suggest picking something positive about the work you do. Something related to helping people is good, because it brings a sense of fulfilment and purpose. It also helps to have compassion for the people we work with and work for. We all suffer to less and greater degrees and to reduce someone else’s suffering is a wonderful thing to do. This may be something you focus on as part of a spiritual path or a humane philosophy, either way it will make you happier to make other happier. Everyone wins, and you will begin to look forward to Mondays, because it will provide more opportunities to help others.

5 Things all effective leaders need to have

Leadership

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

– John C. Maxwell

 

When it comes to effective leadership profit margins and performance projections are not the game. A leaders job is to know where they are leading their followers and to be able to articulate it in such a way as to inspire their followers to move in that direction together and to look after those that they lead. Leadership is about vision, energy, wisdom, human connection and having a moral compass.

Vision

Simon Sinek talks frequently about leadership and the need to have a vision and his vision is “I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day inspired to go to work, feel safe when they are there and return home fulfilled at the end of the day.” My vision is of a world where the vast majority of people collaborate to help each other lead happy and successful lives and live fulfilling lives as a result. This is why I created and continue to write this blog. I would not be so bold as to compare myself to Simon Sinek, we are not even in the same league, but what I am pointing out is that a vision is of a world in which we want to live, it is tangible, it is something we can imagine and work towards.

The job of a leader is to instill their vision in the culture of those who they lead, so no one is fuzzy on the direction that they are going in. This means that the vision becomes a part of everything that the members of a team or the employees of a company do on a daily basis. When Managers only reward short term gains, like reaching a profit margin, then the whole thing becomes unstable and often collapses, but a vision is something that is almost unreachable, it is a north star which we will never reach, but it points us to where we are going. It is therefore a constant and creates a successful and stable working environment, which breads more creativity and innovation, because the vision is clear and the team or the employees feel safe to take creative leaps.

Energy

It is no accident that effective leaders have lots of energy, because energy is infectious and we are drawn to those with energy. If a leader uses energy well they energise the people around them and they diffuse it into the culture of their workplace, causing their team to put there mental, emotional and physical resources to the task of working towards the shared vision, towards the north star of that team and that company.

This only works, however, when the leader in question actively interacts with their team or their employees. Whether you are a CEO or a Team Leader passing your energy onto those under your charge is an essential ingredient of effective leadership, it is part of making a human connection with those that you lead, because for someone to follow you they need to trust you, and trust is built up over time through positive interactions where, as a leader, you look after those in your charge.

Wisdom

It takes time to become an effective leader, it is a combination of both knowledge and experience, along with the other traits I am discussing in this blog post. It has been found that the most effective leaders are between the ages of 45 and 70. This is the sweat spot for effective leadership. Wisdom is a term that is banded around a lot, sometimes it is referred to when talking about people in their 80s and 90s, but I do not think that it is necessarily always about age.

I believe it is about the daily pursuit of knowledge and understanding of how to do the things we care about well. It is about us putting this knowledge and understanding to the test of experience every day, and on the other side of failure after failure we find wisdom. It is a deep understanding of how and why the thoughts, speech and actions of greatness result in this outcome. It also takes time to become wise, which would account for the age range within which we find effective leadership.

Human Connection

When leaders are in charge of a small team of people there are day to day human connections. Everyone knows the names of each others children, everyone’s lives are intertwined. The team will work and socialise together and relationships are built up over time through many many little interactions that amount to strong human connections. Therefore the leader needs to be adept at building and encouraging these connections, these relationships. Empathy is a strong component in these relationships, to connect emotionally on an individual level.

Empathy is a cornerstone of any human relationship and a good leader knows that teams and companies are not built on money or products, they are built on human relationships, because 100% of employees are human beings and 100% of customers are human beings. An effective leaders job is to look after their team or their employees and their employees will look after the customers. This is how sustainable businesses grow, and the stakeholders will benefit from this model more than if the leaders only focused on what the stakeholders wanted.

Moral Compass

As leaders rise up the ranks they become more and more detached from the employees they lead, so empathy no longer works, human connections become lessened, because there are less of the little interactions that add up to a working relationship. This is why empathy decreases in effective leaders in higher ranking positions, but it is in fact replaced by compassion. In other words they become more focused on doing the right thing even when it is hard.

This compassion is their moral compass, which becomes more prominent in effective leaders over time. It is detached from the individual employees that the leader is leading, but it is focused on doing what is right for all of the employees in their charge. Even if they are the CEO of their company, an effective leader is dedicated to doing the right thing, even when there is pressure to do the easy thing and put profits over people.

Effective leaders need to have a vision and clearly communicate it out to those they lead. They need to use empathy to make real connections with the team they lead. They also need to engage their moral compass of compassion when leading from a more senior position when they cannot rely on close working relationships to support and guide their employees. Being an effective leader has a lot to do with knowing that people are more important than profits, because effective leaders create effective leaders in those that they lead. To be a great and effective leader we have to make sure we look after the person to the right of us and the person to the left of us and we can all do that.

Mini Reflection: Be a beacon

Mini Reflections

Light is how we see and how we navigate our world. Light is a symbol for many good things, not least a symbol of unity. Light shines upon the whole of the earth throughout its turning. It feeds the plants and trees, which feed all other living beings. Light also symbolises hope in dark places. There are many dark places in the world at the moment and we must share our light, so that others may see hope and may also see understanding, compassion and forgiveness. Together we can bring light back to the minds of those who are blinded by dark thoughts and ideologies, by being beacons for all that is good in the world, through what we do and what we say each and every day.

Bad leadership and what to do about it

Leadership

We have seen the recent beginning and ending of bad leadership in the world on a global level. The electing of President Trump in America has seen the divisions across the lines of race that go back to the American civil war come out into the open, somewhat encouraged by the words and actions of the President, who seems unable to be a great leader, which such a position really does demand. We have also seen the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 year reign as President of Zimbabwe, to the joy of the people of Zimbabwe. I mention these examples to illustrate the seemingly divided world we now live in. The tone of whether society is divided or united comes from the national leaders that we have, whether this be a President or a Prime Minister, because what is acceptable in society often comes from the words and actions of our global leaders.

If we take the case of President Trump, his comments and actions have stirred up hatred of many minorities, including Black people, Muslims and Mexicans, especially with him recently retweeting videos from the far-right group Britain First. It is this type of divisive thinking that creates much of the division that happens in the world, from person to person and nation to nation, the flames of which are often fanned by the media coverage of such unpleasantness. What the American election of the current President, and the rallies and debates that preceded it, highlight for me, is the desperate need for good leaders to lead the many countries of the world. Good global leaders are people who inspire others to take positive action for the greater good of society and inter-global relationships. They create a situation where people feel safe and valued; they encourage cooperation, stewardship and integrity. But that leaves people like you and me with a problem, what can we do to stem the flow towards division and conflict.

Well, what we do and what we say shapes the world we live in. Through our interactions we co-create our relationships, which in turn creates our society, which in turn creates our nations and our cultures. How we choose to live our lives will influence everything else, even if just a little. What we need is a harmony revolution, because the only sensible way to counteract division in our own lives is to bring people together in harmony. By harmony I mean, to use a metaphor, the bringing together of very different instruments into an orchestra to create beautiful music. When we come together as human beings and we share what makes us unique, then we can collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. We can make the world a better place to be.

Taking the time, when possible, to make perhaps a bit more of an effort in ways that you may already be doing, to chat and ask after each other’s wellbeing, share a story or a joke. Our children and others will see this and perhaps change their own behaviour for the better. Even though it seems such a small thing to do, there is evidence of efforts of this kind having a genuinely positive effect on those doing this and on those around them witnessing it as well. So, I ask of you all, in your own way, to have a think about what you can do, and what you may have thought about doing, along these lines, but have not done yet, because for one reason or another you just haven’t. Make that call to that friend or relative, knock on that door. Lift your head and give a sign of greeting and even stop for a quick chat with that neighbour or colleague at work. Connect with your eyes, words and smiles. Chances are the world will start smiling back at you a lot more often too.