No one is immune. Often our best intentions are sidetracked by challenges. Learning how to move past resistance, restraint, and roadblocks is a key part of personal and leadership development. Practicing our innate capacity for compassion can be especially challenging. Barriers show up in all shapes and sizes - shallow and small, all the way to dense and deep.
As a reminder, we define compassion as the awareness of suffering coupled with the desire to help relieve it. Compassion is comprised of four components: (1) awareness of suffering; (2) a connection to the one suffering in a way that makes us feel that they are worthy of our attention; (3) empathy, or feeling within ourselves the experience of the other’s suffering; and (4) an intention and willingness to act to relieve the suffering.
Let’s explore three barriers to compassion – distraction, judgment, and fear – and how we can intentionally move to the full expression of our compassionate nature.
Distraction
We didn’t evolve from the laid-back apes. Our ancestors relied on a constant wariness to avoid the dangers of the wild. From that history, we developed a protective threat detection system deep in the base of our brain. This system still protects us today, and is very important when we are truly threatened. But modern tech and turbulence in our lives has put our nervous systems on constant high alert. Marketers and device manufacturers, in fact, exploit our system of threat detection by purposely designing messages, beeps, and flashes that trigger it.
When you are distracted by an external trigger or internal thoughts, it takes you from being present to what is in front of you. Distraction hijacks your awareness, taking you off the four-step path to compassion at the very first step, awareness.
The antidote to distraction is to develop a mind that is practiced in intentional awareness. Do this by becoming aware of the ways you are distracted. Practice bringing your attention back to the present moment. You might find it useful to focus on the movement of your breath, notice the ground beneath your feet, or close your eyes for a second. It’s often helpful to remove the things from your life that are distracting you in unproductive ways – turn off your phone, turn down the notifications, and establish more boundaries to keep out excessive intrusions into your busy life.
Judgment
We are all so fast to jump feet first into judgment. How many times when you have seen someone suffering, have you jumped to a conclusion about whose “fault” it was or what the other person could just do (or not do) to fix the situation? Judgments like these make it difficult to navigate the second and third steps of compassion: connection and empathy.
No one intentionally chooses suffering. If our behaviors create suffering, we would change those behaviors if it were simple to do. Typically, the visible suffering and unproductive behaviors are symptoms of deeper wounds that can be challenging to heal.
The antidote to judgment is understanding. Understanding the complex causes of negative behaviors does not mean that you approve of the behaviors. It simply means that you understand how those behaviors arose. It also equips you better to take the right action. Acting without an understanding of root causes can often actually make matters worse. We see this counterproductive result in charitable outreach efforts that create dependency instead of solving root problems.
Fear
The final step on the path to compassion is acting to relieve the suffering. The realization that compassionate action can be complex and challenging can generate doubt and fear about acting: Will my effort be enough? Will I succeed? Will I be overwhelmed by challenges? Often these fears are limiting beliefs we’ve imagined. They may also be about things over which we have no control, which then stops us from acting in the areas where we have control.
The way over this hurdle is courage. Be willing to acknowledge your fears. Discern what is helpful and possible to do. Then act in the best way you know in the moment. That is compassion. When you offer what you have available, and do so courageously, you can also let go of the outcome in the knowledge that so much of life is beyond our control.
Compassionate action is not pity. It’s not sympathy. It is an offering from our heart whose benefit we won’t know in advance, and sometimes will never know.
In closing…
Yes, compassion is hard. It requires every ounce of our strength and wisdom, and continuous cultivation with practice. As compassionate leaders, we need to heighten our awareness, deepen our understanding, and dial-up our courage. That is how we set the barriers aside and set compassionate action into motion.