Four Ways To Strengthen Our Compassionate Muscle

We are often called upon to be compassionate, but the question is how do we respond? Is our compassionate outreach something that comes to us naturally or is it an act we consciously make when confronted with someone who is suffering? Is it both? What we do know is that compassion has a biological and physiological effect on us.  Our brain lights up, heart rate slows, and we secrete the bonding hormone oxytocin, so something happens to us biologically and physiologically.

Let’s unravel this a bit.

There are certain times when we are called upon to show genuine compassion. Perhaps it is these times when compassion comes naturally to us. We often face situations when someone in our family or one of our friends become ill and we have a compassionate outreach towards them. We might come across an accident on the highway, or encounter a homeless person, or an animal injured and suffering – in these situations a person with a compassionate heart would show a genuine outpouring of love. On the other hand there are people who ‘harden’ themselves to such situations or don’t know how to respond. In such situations we need to be careful about how we judge them.

People who have a hard time showing compassion may have difficulty in showing their feelings and see things in more black and white terms. Sometimes they approach difficult situations, such as facing illness, death and the needs of others in rather harsh terms and say, “Well that’s life. Get over it.”

Then there are those who approach life in highly objective ways. They are objective thinkers and have difficulty in getting in touch with their own feelings. They keep their feelings bottled up inside rather than expressing them outwardly. Often people like this have tears in their eyes but can’t verbally express their feelings. These people may have a ‘warm heart’ but keep their feelings to themselves.
Sometimes it is just appropriate not to say or do anything. There are times when we are called to just sit with someone, give them a warm hug, hold a hand or just listen without saying anything.

Perhaps the answer to the question posed in the first paragraph could be answered this way: compassion comes naturally to some and is difficult for others. Each expresses it in their own way. How we express compassion often results from our belief system, cultural moorings and family values.

Contemplatives from Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist traditions, to name a few, instructed their followers on how to nurture compassion. Businesses, governments, health and social agencies often extend a compassionate outreach that often models those same traditions.

This leads to the question: can we find ways to strengthen our own compassionate muscle?  Mahatma Gandhi responded to this question by saying, “Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use.” This suggests that compassionate acts become easier the more we extend ourselves to others. It’s like any muscle. Building arm muscles allows us to lift heavy packages with ease. So how can we build our compassionate muscle?

Here are four suggestions:

Self-awareness Approaches: Understanding our ourselves is a critical step to learning. This suggests taking some time to examine our attitudes and behaviours including how we approach people, what motivates us and our relations with others. Sometimes we need help with truly understanding our own attitudes and behaviours. One source of help may be going off to a personal retreat away from the hustle and bustle of the noise and distraction that surrounds us to a secluded and quiet place in the country. Here we can spend time with spiritual reading, reflection and discussion with a spiritual guide. 

Another source may be to attend a workshop designed to assist us with getting in touch with our attitudes, feelings and sensitivities. These often use a variety of self-awareness methods and techniques to uncover suppressed feelings, ego fragmentation, and negative interpersonal attitudes and behaviours. Many years ago I attended such a workshop, which lasted two weeks, where personal guidance, individual journaling, small group sessions and large group activity were employed. The overall purpose of self-awareness approaches is ultimately to help us come to realize our ‘true self’ in relation to others so that we can become our ‘better selves’.

Meditation: I’m a firm believer in the power of meditation. Meditation has shown to strengthen our spiritual muscle in the areas of compassion, forgiveness and empathetic response. Wisdom people have known this for centuries. Now we have biological evidence that meditation affects the brain. (I have dealt with this in other articles and in my book Eternal Unfolding: A Journey that turned into a different kind of love story).

Incremental Steps: If you are a person who has difficulty expressing compassion then experimenting with compassionate outreach in an incremental way may help you. This suggests small compassionate steps such as:

• extending a hand to others without being asked,
• visiting a sick friend without feeling you have to say much and letting your presence speak for you, holding five, ten or twenty dollars back in your wallet to use for a homeless person when the opportunity arises,
• accepting another’s appreciation without depreciating yourself,
• starting the day with a positive affirmation that encourages a compassionate attitude such as: “I’m sensitive to the needs of others,” or “I want to bring joy, peace, forgiveness and compassion to others.”​

Encourage compassionate self-accountability: We often hold others accountable for their actions by pointing out areas where corrective action is necessary. How about holding ourselves accountable for not extending a compassionate outreach when we are faced with an opportunity to do so. A simple technique to fix this situation is to review your day before you retire and honestly ask yourself, “Did I have an opportunity to show compassion today? And if so, “What can I do about it tomorrow or the next day?”  Another technique is to ask a trusting confidant to hold you accountable when they see an opportunity where you didn’t show compassion.

It’s not so important to judge whether others are compassionate, but to grow our own compassionate muscle. There are more ways to strengthen our compassionate muscle I will highlight them next month.

Thanks for reading,
Richard P. Fontanie MSW

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