Tag: compassion

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Over-communicating is All About You – What I Learned in May 2016

Get selfish

Over-communicating is as much about dealing with yourself as it is dealing with another person.

That is counter-intuitive, but through looking at the world with an “over-communication” first lens, I realized that my effectiveness with carrying out tactics relied on how I dealt with internal strife.

I didn’t see this as a chance to deal with self-awareness, but here I realized that all the tactics in the world won’t help you with communicating unless you listen to yourself first.

Battles with depression, fear, and impostor syndrome came with every time I confirmed a meeting, told someone something difficult, or didn’t hedge my opinion.  Prior to this month, I got away from those things because it was uncomfortable.  I saw failure before each one of those decisions.

How many times have you confirmed a meeting with someone and felt pushy?

That feeling of being “pushy” is fear. And it obstructs you from seeing that confirmation doesn’t make you seem anxious, it makes you look like a compassionate professional .

Compassionate?

Yes, it shows respect for someone’s time and respect for their character. It displays enough vulnerability to allow them to make decisions.

Even if you fail, even if what you fear comes true, it saves you time. Time is the most valuable resource we have. Our focus and our filtering decide how effective we are in the world.

“Over-communicating” is time intensive, so you need to focus and filter.

In order to make it count, you need to understand that your “selfishness” creates the space for you to communicate effectively.

If you don’t, you end up second guessing yourself and dealing with regrets, an emotion that I find far more punishing that failure. There are failures I laugh at now, I never laugh at regrets.

So deal with the fear, get vulnerable, and don’t let regret have room. You are better for it.

Biggest Lesson – Listening to yourself gives you the ability to over-communicate, and therefore become more effective to the world around you.

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Perfect Leaders Don’t Exist

The Truth Is Ugly

If you expect a perfect leader, you will get a perfect charlatan.

Two meanings so far:

  1. If you are looking for a leader, avoid the one with the “perfect qualifications.” It is a mask, and you don’t know what is underneath.
  2. If you intend to lead, it’s ok that you aren’t perfect. No one is. Love yourself and get in the game. We need you.
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Trapped By The Old Opinions

 

I was talking to a friend about someone they knew, and how that person let a past transgression from 10 years ago effect their behavior to this day.

Life throws us trouble. It isn’t fair. But, when we take the ideas of the past and hold on to them unjustly, we end up troubled. The anger we have for someone else, or a situation doesn’t end up effecting them, it ends up effecting us. That hate gets turned in.

Our anger for others ends up only effecting us. That’s why I like to journal. The journaling gives me a chance to look at old opinions.Old opinions are great to look at.  They give you the chance to look back at the past, and notice the changes you’ve made.

We are constantly growing as people. The old carries some weight, but only the amount of weight that we allow it to. Acknowledging that you change is the first step to doing it, and a great way to do that is to periodically look back at those old opinions and see how you’ve developed over the course of a year.

I spent some time looking at old posts on this blog and some older journals. I had some shocking and surprising positions. It was interesting to go back down “memory lane” and remember some of my older feelings.

After reading a few, I thought about how change happens, and how we are always evolving. The person in those posts and notes is gone, lost to the history on those pages. The person here recalling them is a different person, with different goals and accomplishments.

We don’t wake up the same person we were when we went to sleep. We change everyday, and if we don’t acknowledge that, we stay trapped by the past. Acknowledge that we are constantly growing helps you leave pain where it belongs.

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Compassion Is Not Compliance.

[bctt tweet=”Compassion is hard work, the opposite of compliance. “]

I think we simplify the term compassion, so much so that we lose a lot of its meaning.

I am guilty of it. One of the statements that brings me back on track is  remembering that compassion is not compliance.

For me, the idea of compassion instantly brings up Buddha or Jesus. Both figures were known for their compassion.I think of the parables of forgiveness that both have.  What I often forget, is that the reason they got to the forgiveness part of the stories is because they sought to create change.

Compassion meant understanding, and that understanding often left them at the opposite side of the things as they are. It gave them, and the people who lean on compassion, to ultimately understand and decide what something meant. If it meant change, they would go about making that change. The base of that energy was compassion, and I think it’s a super power.

Even so, it isn’t comfortable. Questioning people or the way things done never is. Often there is a price to pay for clinging to your convictions, even if it comes in a beautiful package.

It isn’t a clear path to get there. There is a mistake, where people confuse empathy with sympathy. There isn’t compassion to understand, just using willpower to tolerate.

 

Tolerating, and feeling sorry for someone isn’t a path to compassion, it routes people back to this road of ego. It is easier when you see people who you think are “worse” off than you, but it takes its toll nonetheless.

It becomes a ticking time bomb, a run on your feelings that can’t help to expose itself when the time isn’t right, and the world is annoying you.

That tolerance is just another way of compliance. Its allowing something to happen, which has nothing to do with understanding.

It isn’t a growth measure, it’s a stop-gap, designed to keep people at arm’s length.

Compassion cuts through that, and connects your inner value with your understanding. It isn’t complying to the world around you, its being patient to understand it, and being a change agent when necessary.  That leaves people extremely vulnerable, and sometimes, people angry.

 

It’s hard work, the opposite of compliance.

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Compassion

There are no off days for compassion. It is constantly a work in progress.

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