Compassion: What is it?

Woman in hotel room looking out the window.

Self compassion is essential when you’re committed to true personal transformation.

What is compassion, anyway?

We’re continuing on the theme of greeting yourself with open, friendly curiosity.

This time, we approach it from the perspective of compassion.

Compassion means something different to everyone, so in a sense, this is a meaningless word. Everyone nods in agreement, “Oh yes, we must give ourselves compassion.” But what does that even mean?

To me it means that we make a deep commitment, a promise, not to abandon ourselves, no matter what arises. No matter what we see in ourselves, we don’t turn away. We don’t reject. We don’t negate. We don’t escape.

This is much, much deeper than the idea of self acceptance. This is not just about accepting the things we don’t particularly appreciate about ourselves: our insecurities, our weaknesses, our afflictions, our pettiness. It’s something much deeper.

It’s having the strength to stay with our imperfect human experience. To remain steadfastly with our “selves,” no matter what, and to the very end. It’s a deep and unbreakable fidelity.

More Basic Human

What’s You and Not You

Today let’s investigate what’s you, and what’s not you. What’s yours and what’s not yours. These are topics we work on at length in the…

Learn life skills your parents didn’t or couldn’t teach you

Ready to deprogram destructive patterns you learned growing up? Great, but that’s only half of it. It’s your choice, and also your responsibility. That’s a…

Boredom and distraction on the spiritual path

Most people have no idea how their minds actually work. If you aren’t using your mind intentionally, something else will use it for you. When…

Relaxing into the Paradox

All of your so called waking hours, the mental apparatus is arranging and rearranging the furniture, so to speak, to create your unique experience of…

Developing Agency: becoming someone you can trust

You need to develop personal accountability if you are ever going to trust yourself. One of the ways we give up authorship and sovereignty is…

Everything Must Go!

Yes, I hear you. You’ve got stuff you need to think about. Work issues, practical issues, it’s not all just emotional stuff rattling around in…

Mental Chatter is the Mind’s Default Mode

There are parts of your brain that register and process various types of experience, and another that narrates it. In default mode, they activate almost…

How to manage being overwhelmed by thought loops

What to do when you go from one thought loop to another? How to deal with the sheer number of these programs? Getting an accurate…

How did we get so stuck?

Keeping the growth mindset throughout your life. The societal demand to answer the question “who are you” leads to self-image fixation. If you switch from…

The Power of No

It’s the perfect time of year to practice saying no. Not an apologetic no, the one where you have to qualify and explain and justify…

Under The Hood: Perfection

Do you have the Perfectionism Program constantly running in the background of your Operating System? Do you keep adjusting your behavior to satisfy its demands?…

Reader Q&A: I Need To Break My Internet Addiction

Whether it’s news or cat videos, you may find you just can’t stop. Are you addicted to the internet? Let’s step into our reader’s experience…

Amara Strand Youtube Videos
videos are meant to be listened to with headphones