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There’s a weird thing about how people generally handle traumatic experiences.

They often don’t say, “Wow, I’m glad that weird aberration to my normal experience is over.”

Instead, they unconsciously say, “That bad thing must have happened to me for a reason.”

Then they’ll often conclude, “The reason that bad thing happened to me because I’m on a bad, dark path in life.”

Then that new belief — that they are essentially stuck on a dark path — makes healing difficult.

They start to expect (and even seek out) bad experiences, and ignore the opportunities for good ones.

“I’m on a dark path” easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In this new 6-minute video, I talk about how you can recognize when you’ve gotten on to a path of darkness, and how you can get off of it. I also share some examples of people making that shift

If you are interested in healing, you’ll almost certainly want to know the ideas I present in this video.

There’s a Fundamental Mistake at the core of every loss of heart:

Believing that if you can’t see a way towards achieving your heart’s longing, it means that there is no way forward.

There you are, pursuing your heart’s longing. Perhaps it’s to find a great job, or to build a great relationship, or to lose weight and develop stellar fitness.

You’re buzzing along, but then something gets in the way.

What “gets in the way” will vary. It may be that you’ve tried everything you can think of, but still can’t seem to land the job you want. Or it may be that you’ve tried “spicing things up” with your spouse, but your spouse hasn’t responded. Or it may be you tried dieting, but diet food all tastes like sawdust and is flat-out boring to eat.

You hit a problem that is in the way, and you can’t seem to get past it.

In the face of that problem, you make the Fundamental Mistake: On a subconscious level you conclude, “I’ve tried everything, and nothing works to bring me closer to achieving my heart’s longing. Therefore, there must not be a way forward.”

And that’s the moment you lose heart.

From then on you are likely to head in the wrong direction

Once people have lost heart, they usually go into analysis mode. They ask, “Why didn’t it work? Why did I hit that problem?”

After they’ve figured out the “why,” they go into “fix-it” mode. They start taking action to fix their situation, to try to make it go the way they want it to.

For instance, a person might say, “The reason why I can’t achieve my heart’s longing is that I’m too lazy. I’ll fix it by making myself work harder.”

Or a person might say “The reason why I can’t achieve my heart’s longing is because my family isn’t supportive of me. I’ll fix it by confronting them and getting them to be more supportive.”

There are endless numbers of “whys” and “fix-its.” But the bottom line is this:

The “whys” and “fix-its” don’t help, because you haven’t cared for the state of your heart.

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You have to look at who you are being when you ask “why” and when you try to “fix it”

Once you’ve lost heart, you pursue your “whys” and your “fix its” as the person who has already accepted that there’s no way forward.

And that doesn’t work well.

You can verify this by answering these three simple questions:

• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how good are you at taking truly inspired, innovative action? Probably not very good.
• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how good are the decisions that you make? Probably pretty poor.
• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how well are you able to analyze why something didn’t work, and what your next actions should be? Probably not very well.

Once you’ve accepted the idea that there’s no way forward, you’ve become a person who already knows that you are doomed. Yes, you can take action as that person, but those actions will be guided by your loss of heart, so they probably won’t work out very well.

You can’t just think your way out of it

Upon hearing this, many people say, “I’d better stop doing that! I’ll stop deciding that there’s no way forward!”

That doesn’t work, because losses of heart happen in the blink of an eye. You are pursuing what you long for, you hit a big enough problem, and you subconsciously accept that there’s no way forward. Subtly, something inside of you crumbles. The loss of heart occurs. It happens fast.

You can’t prevent loss of heart retroactively. You have to get good at noticing when it has happened, and at caring for yourself when it does.

Pretending that it doesn’t happen, or trying to police your every thought to keep it from happening, will only make you go nuts.

The good news: Just because you can’t see a way forward doesn’t mean you can’t be shown

Fortunately, just because you can’t see a way forward, doesn’t mean you can’t be shown one.

However, you can’t be shown a new way forward, unless you

• admit that you’ve lost heart, and
• are willing to open to the healing of your hurting heart.

Admitting you’ve lost heart. First, you have to admit that you’ve lost heart. For most people, the experience of accepting the idea that there’s no way forward is so painful that they don’t admit that it’s actually happened. They “double down” and try harder, acting with increasing force and desperation.

To be shown a new way, you have to be willing to admit that you’ve lost heart. You need to be willing to say, “Wow, when I’m pursuing my heart’s longing, and something gets in the way, I do lose heart. And the way I lose heart is I accept the idea that there’s no way forward. Wow, I really do that sometimes. Ow.”

That’s a fundamentally different approach than simply asking “Why didn’t it work?,” and trying to fix it, as a person who believes there’s no way forward. When you admit that you’ve lost heart, you are taking your healing process in an entirely different — and far more effective — direction.

Being open to the healing of your hurting heart. Second, if you want to be shown a new way forward, you have to be open to the healing of the hurt your heart experienced when you accepted the idea there’s no way forward.

I help people do this by guiding them to turn to their Source — by whatever name they have for it — and to bring their hurting heart with them to that Source.

This is where you use your compassion to “gather up” the part of you that has bought the idea that there’s no way forward. Then you turn, with expectation, to the Highest, Most Merciful Reality that you can imagine.

As you turn, you ask this question: “Is it really true that, just because I can’t see a way forward toward my heart’s longing, that there really isn’t one?”

You then bathe in the Light, until you experience some sort of transformational answer to that question.

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What sort of answer will you get?

I can’t tell you exactly what sort of answer you’ll get when you do this, because the thing about transformation is, it’s unpredictable.

When you open yourself to be transformed in the areas where you’ve accepted that there’s no way forward, you can’t know in advance what you’re going to be shown.

I have noticed, however, that transformation tends to fall into a couple of distinct categories:

The transformation of Insight. Sometimes when a person turns to Something Higher, they get a clear insight. They see something new, generally along the lines of, “Hey, it’s not true that I’m fated to never find a new way forward. In fact, I really could think about my problem this way: [New insight about a way forward, or a new way of thinking about the problem].” They feel charged up to take a new action and often have a clear direction.

The transformation of Assurance. Other times, a person gets a new sense of being loved and cared for even when they don’t see a way forward right away. They feel a new level of compassion for themselves, generally along the lines of, “Wow, I start to see that there is love for me, even when I’m having a hard time. Now that I see that, I may not know the exact route forward, but I know if I keep following this love, there’s a good chance I’ll be shown one.” They feel calm, warm, and able to “stick with it” in the pursuit of their longings.

And, of course, sometimes you get both.

Having told you these things, I feel I also should give you a warning: While it’s a good idea to turn with a sense of expectation, it’s always a bad idea to turn with a specific picture of what your transformation “ought to” look like. The key is that that you are opening to something beyond your own thoughts, in order to discover how transformation comes to you. It’s a process of discovery — don’t let your thoughts about what you “should” be receiving get in the way of what you are receiving.

What you can change, starting right now

To review:

You lose heart when you are pursuing something your heart longs for. Something gets in the way that you can’t seem to get past. And you accept the idea that, because you can’t see a path to what you long for, there is no way forward.

In the face of that happening, you are likely to try to figure out why you got stopped, and to go into “fix-it” mode.

That doesn’t work well, though, because when you take action as someone who’s accepted the idea that there’s no way forward, you’re actions aren’t going to be particularly innovative or inspired.

I’m suggesting that, from now on, you start to notice when you’ve accepted the idea that there’s no way forward. And I’m suggesting that, when that happens, you take the time to care for your heart that is hurting.

Rather than asking “Why did that happen, and how can I fix it,” try admitting that you’ve lost heart. Turn to your Source with the question, “Is it true I’m fated to not find a way forward toward my deepest longing?” Receive healing and insight, and bring that renewed energy and resource into your pursuit of the life you long for.

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It takes attentiveness and practice, but the result — being able to keep moving toward the life you really long for — is worth the effort. I’ve seen this happen with scores of people I’ve worked with, and experienced it myself.

If you’d like help with any part of this process, you can send me a private message with your question on my coaching page (link opens in a new window), or leave a comment here in the comments section below. Either way, I’d love to hear how this lands with you.

Related posts:

• Maybe you shouldn’t jump off a cliff
• Everything is personal
• Why can’t you just visualize a crosswalk, then step into traffic?
• Self-compassion: Healing’s secret ingredient

I’m not saying relationships should come down to that. But often they do. People assemble evidence about how their partner is being a jerk. They gather supporters to back up their point of view. And they create plans and take action to put a stop to this jerky behavior, once and for all.

While it’s certainly true that other people sometimes do things that should not be tolerated, it’s dangerous to jump to conclusions too quickly about who the jerk is in a situation.

I’d like to give you a real example from my life, in a little Holiday Story I call,

Who’s the Jerk Here? A Holiday Story by Dmitri Bilgere

Jerky, Jerky Fawn

My wife, Fawn, had been being very unreliable recently (even by her own admission). I’m not going to go into the embarrassing details, but she had been going through a time of frequently saying she was going to do things — sometimes important things — and either not doing them, or putting them off for so long I had to do them for her.

(And by the way, she okay’d me sharing this story. Thanks, Fawn! )

Anyway, this unreliability was becoming very upsetting to me. It wasn’t like she was too busy. She had plenty of time to do other things. But when she told me she would do something, she would consistently — and from where I sat, deliberately — not do it.

Here I was, working my fingers to the bone! And she wasn’t even doing the few minor things she said she would! And it was going on, and on!

And at the holidays, too!

Surely she was the jerk in this situation.

Right?

Time to Do Some Healing

I decided to do the same kind of healing on myself that I do with my phone coaching clients.

When I’m talking to a client, the first step is always to find out what they want help with.

So I asked myself,

Okay, Dmitri. What do you want help with here?

I realized that I wanted help holding my wife to account to do what she said she would do.

That led to the second question:

Why did I want that? What was the longing in my heart I was trying to fulfill by being better at holding her to account?

I realized that I really, truly, wanted to feel like Fawn and I were on the same team. I wanted to feel like we were standing side-by-side facing the world together, and like I could count on her in our relationship.

And that led to the next question:

What was I getting instead?

What I was getting instead was that my wife was being really unreliable. It seemed like I couldn’t count on her.

That’s what I was getting instead of the “team” feeling that my heart longed for.

And that behavior was what I was complaining about.

I think a lot of people would leave it there. “Here’s the behavior I don’t like in my partner. I can prove she’s being a jerk. Everyone agrees. How can I get her to change?”

They’d then set about figuring out ways to “deal with it.”

And That’s Where Ya Gotta Look Deeper

While it’s true that not all behavior is acceptable, I think it’s important to look at the state of your heart before responding to a difficult circumstance.

In my case, I had to answer the next question:

In the face of the circumstance where your wife is being unreliable and you can’t count on her, how do you lose heart?

This was important, because how I lost heart goverened how I showed up in the relationship.

And I realized that in the face of her being unreliable, I had started to lose heart by believing that I  had to expect nothing of her.

And that’s where things started to get interesting.

Jerky, Jerky Dmitri

Rather than focusing solely on what Fawn was bringing to the relationship, I started to look at what I was bringing, too.

I asked myself:

When I believed that I had to expect nothing of Fawn, how did that lead me to treat her?

It turns out that it led me to treat her pretty poorly. I was treating her like she was capable of nothing. Like she wasn’t really competent. Like I’d naturally have to clean up her messes, and take care of everything in our relationship myself.

I saw who I had turned into:

I had turned into a jerk.

Two Can Play the Jerk Game

You know, we get so caught up in defending ourselves against the bad behavior of others that we rarely take the time to look at who we become in the face of that bad behavior.

I see this in my coaching work all the time.

When people are upset with their partners, they usually want to articulate what they are upset about so they can figure out “the best way to handle it.”

I was doing that, too: Fawn wasn’t keeping her word. Therefore, I had to figure out a way to make her keep her word. End of story.

But in the coaching I do, I don’t help people articulate what upsets them about their partner so they can defend themselves better against their partner.

In my work, I help people articulate what upsets them about their partner for the purpose of discovering how they give up on love.

Then I help them heal their heart that has given up, so they can put beauty into their relationship, and be a positive influence on their partner — no matter how their partner is behaving.

In my case, I had given up on love by accepting the idea that I had to expect nothing of my wife.

I want to be a great husband — a man who lifts his wife up and builds up the relationship, even when things are difficult.

But instead, I was being a husband who expected her to not keep her word. Who thought poorly of her. Who looked down on her.

Jerk, jerk, jerk.

Dmitri Learns a Holiday Lesson

Next I really looked at the state of my heart, by asking the question,

What does it do to your heart to believe you have to expect nothing of your wife?

When I really looked, I saw that taking on that belief broke something inside of me.

I saw how in the circumstances of Fawn being unreliable, I actually took the step of concluding that I was fated to a relationship where I could expect nothing.

And that belief broke my heart.

Turning to the “Blessing Current”

The healing coaching I do has two parts: The first is really facing the heartbreaking fate that you’ve accepted as true. I had done that part. I was honestly seeing how, when Fawn was unreliable, I took on the belief that I was fated to having to expect nothing of her.

The second part is acknowledging that when you’re believing in a heartbreaking fate, you are not in touch with your internal “Blessing Current” — whatever you might call it — and opening yourself up to experiencing that Blessing Current again.

When I then turned to that Blessing Current in myself, and let that Light begin to touch my broken heart, things started to change.

What I Started to See

As I started to feel the Blessing Light touch that hurting place in my heart, things immediately began to lighten for me.

As that place in my heart filled with Light, I started to see that my wife actually needed me to expect more from her … but, just as much as she needed me to expect more from her, she also needed me to believe in her.

I started to see that she needed me to see her greatness, and expect it, and believe in it.

I also started to remember times of seeing greatness in her, and her inner “solidity.” I started to see that the way to expect more of her was to relate to that great and solid part of her, to “put my heart next to her solidity.”

I realized that I really could expect more of her — not in a judgmental, domineering way, but as the man who truly sees her greatness and solidity, and who relates to her from that space.

And I started to see that, from that space, there was a real route forward for the two of us to be powerful in the world, together.

My heart felt full of love, and very close to her. I was no longer upset. And I returned to our relationship a different, better man.

My heart was healed, and I was naturally able to stop being a jerk.

The State of Your Heart Opens or Closes Doors

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that how you expect people to behave influences how they actually behave.

There have been plenty of studies that show that if a teacher expects a student to succeed, the student is more likely to do well… And that if a teacher expects a student to fail, then that student is more likely to do poorly.

When I was expecting nothing of Fawn, I was constantly sending her signals that said, “Go ahead and screw up … I know you are going to.” That environment of expectation made it really easy for her to not do what she said she’d do.

Once I made the shift to putting my heart next to her greatness, and started relating to her from there, my behavior changed. And as a result, I now see her competence — even if she might not. I’m treating her differently, and that’s making it easier for her to do what she says.

And the best part is, I’m not faking it, or pretending to see it, or claiming to expect more, while secretly expecting nothing. I truly see her greatness. From there, expecting more is natural.

So… Has it Helped?

I’m happy to tell you that things have improved with Fawn. Since I started relating to her greatness and solidity, and stopped treating her like she was going to fail to keep her word, she has become more focused and motivated. It feels to both of us like a door has opened…a door I was previously holding closed.

And that’s more likely to make for a happy holiday season for us both.

The Next Chapter is up to You

This story is a reminder that when your heart is upset, you aren’t bringing your best self to your life. And it’s a reminder to take the time to care for your heart when other people’s behavior is upsetting you.

I’m not saying you should never confront anyone. I’m not saying that you should never leave any relationship, or that you should just put up with any behavior.

But I am saying that when you see how you lose heart when someone behaves poorly — and heal that loss of heart — you become someone who can act for the best, from a clear place, no matter what you end up doing.

And that will bring harmony and beauty into your life … a great thing, at any time of year.

Wishing you happy holidays and a joyous new year,

Dmitri Bilgere

Sometimes I’ll simply tell someone that something is possible for them, and they’ll believe me.

And they won’t stop there — they’ll live from this new belief, and get awesome new results.

That’s because an Authority can change beliefs. My Authority is so strong for these folks, it overrides their own belief and allows them to be different.

An “Authority” can change your belief about yourself when you believe in that authority more than you believe your current, limiting belief.

An Authority can be a coach, a therapist, a guru, a friend… It simply has to be someone you believe in more than you believe in your own limitation.

An Authority is someone where you stop and say, “Wow, if they say it, it must be true.”

It’s also part of why a Guru-type can say something and people actually change from hearing it. If you have enough confidence in the Guru’s Authority, you’ll “make the jump” to the new way of believing.

And it’s also why, as children, we’ll believe what our parents say, even in the face of (sometimes) ample evidence that they are wrong.

They have the authority, and we believe in that authority — more than we believe in our selves.

Authority is a great way to change beliefs. It’s fast, thorough, and — if the authority is strong enough — it makes permanent changes.

The change is only as good as the Authority you consult

The thing is…

Authority is a great way to get changes — but the changes are only as good as the Authority you consult.

That’s why when I work with people I help them to discover their relationship to their Highest Authority. I help them see — and take on for themselves — what their true Highest Authority — the Highest and Most Beautiful Reality they can conceive of — really believes is possible for them.

It doesn’t matter what  you call that Highest Authority. You might call it “God,” or “Nature,” or “the Universe.” You might call it “My Deepest Heart,” or “Inspiration,” or “My Inner Knowing.” The name you call it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is this: Whatever you believe your Highest Authority believes about you, you will automatically believe about yourself.

If you believe that your Highest Authority has a positive future for you, you’ll believe you have a positive future for yourself — and act accordingly. You’ll take all the actions of a person who believes they have a positive future, and get the results those actions create.

And by the same token, if you unconsciously believe that your Highest Authority has a negative fate in store for you, you’ll live from that belief, as well. You’ll take the actions of a person who believes they have a negative fate, and get those results in your life.

This is important because if you haven’t thought much about the Highest Authority you are believing in, you may have unconsciously taken on discouraging messages you’ve gotten from your parents, or from your childhood, as your Highest Authority.

And that can make it extremely difficult to be happy and effective in life.

How to discover what Highest Authority you are believing in

The poet Rumi says “Everyone had turned their face in some direction.” Each person has a sense of what the Highest Authority has in store for them — even if it’s generated by childhood messages.

No one is exempt… Which is why I suggest you think about the question: What Highest Authority are you listening to in the most important areas of your life?

Here’s how you discover what kind of Higher Authority you are believing in:

1. Get clear on a situation that is troubling you, then
2. Discover what you really believe your fate is in that situation, then
3. Ask yourself, “What’s the Highest Authority like in the world where that fate is true?”

The entrepreneur who had lost his motivation

Let me give you an example:
An entrepreneur recently called me for coaching because he wanted “some advice about how to be more motivated.” He had been sitting down to work, but couldn’t seem to get anything done. Most of his “work” time ended up being spend unproductively goofing off on Facebook.

Step 1: Get clear on a situation that is troubling him.

“I need help,” he told me. “I need to get stuff done. The stuff I need to do is actually stuff I want to do. It’s not like I hate it or anything — I actually care about it. But I just can’t seem to get myself to do anything.”

That was the situation that was troubling him.

Step 2: Discover what he really believes his fate is in that situation.

I wanted to know what he believed his fate was, so first I wanted to find out what he was up against.

“OK, I said. “So you want to be more productive. If I told you, ‘just go be more productive,’ what would you say was in the way of that? What’s the problem that you are up against in being more productive?”

“What am I up against?” he replied. “I’ll tell you what I’m up against: No matter what I do, nothing ever really seems to work. I’ve had some successes in my business, sure, but nothing has ever really ‘taken off’ for me. My hard work just doesn’t produce the results I want.”

“So,” I said, “When you find yourself up against the experience that your hard work doesn’t produce the results you want, what do you start to believe your fate will be?”

He thought about it, and said, “It seems like I’m fated to be the guy who has big dreams, and who wants to make an impact on the world, but who never actually gets anywhere. I’m fated to simply struggle in vain.”

“So,” I said to him, “You’re calling me for advice about how to be more motivated while you struggle in vain through life, is that it?”

He had to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Hearing that, I can see why I don’t have any motivation! If I’m fated to struggle in vain, I’d be a fool to do any work at all. It’d be pointless! I might as well goof off on Facebook all day.”

“Yes,” I said. “Advice isn’t going to help the guy who has already accepted it’s his fate to struggle in vain. We need to help you with your belief that you are fated to struggle in vain, no matter what you do.”

Step 3: What the Highest Authority like in the world where that is true?

I asked him, “What’s the Highest Authority like in the world where you created with a deep desire to make an impact on the world, but are fated to struggle in vain?”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s a very unfair and cruel god, to tell you the truth. It’s a Highest Authority who sets me up to fail, and who doesn’t care. Yuk!”

Yes,” I said. “That is the Authority you are paying attention to. That’s what you are believing in — that you are fated to struggle and fail. As long as you are facing that Highest Authority, you’re not going to have much motivation to get to work, no matter what else you do.”

He agreed that was true. The dark fate he was believing in had to be addressed.

Turning to the real Highest Authority

My client’s face was turned toward a Highest Authority who set him up to fail. And as long as he was faced in that direction, no matter how much great advice he got, no matter how many plans he made, it wouldn’t matter. His foundational belief that the Universe was setting him up to struggle in vain would always find a way to prevail.

Fortunately, just because you are faced in a direction doesn’t mean you have to keep facing that way.

There’s one more step to finish this process:

Step 4: Turn to the actual Highest and Most Beautiful Reality.

I asked him, “Look into your heart: is this Highest Authority who sets you up to fail really the Highest and Most Beautiful Reality you can conceive of?”

“No,” he said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“So let’s turn to the actual Highest Authority. Take this part of you that believes you are fated to to struggle in vain, and turn with it to your best sense of that true Highest and Most Beautiful Reality.”

He did so, turning in his imagination to his best sense of his True Highest Authority, the Highest and Most Beautiful Reality he could conceive of.

Immediately he started feeling a lot of light coming into that place in him that was holding on to the belief he was fated to struggle in vain.

“Wow,” he said. “I’m starting to see that I not fated to struggle in vain… And also that, in a way, it doesn’t matter whether or not I get the results I want from my actions. What’s important is that I do what’s put into my heart to do! I can see that if I do what’s in my heart, I’ll eventually get the results I want… Or something even better!

As he continued to experience his best sense of that true Highest Authority, he saw even more. “I can see that when I’m doing something because my heart is called to do it, great stuff can happen. In fact, I’m starting to see that I actually have no idea what amazing things might happen in my business, or which of my actions might spark a miracle. I have no idea just how great this could get, actually!”

At that point the call was effectively over. “I’ve got to get to work right now,” he said excitedly as we said goodbye. His new message from his Highest Authority — That he had no idea just how great things could get — had him totally motivated to get moving.

Which way is your face turned?

As Rumi says, “Everyone has turned their face in some direction.” He continues, “The saints have turned in the direction without directions. In the direction without directions all is spring; any other direction holds nothing but the cold of December.”

When you are upset, you have turned your face to a Highest Authority that is the cold of December. Like my client, you have started believing in a dark fate that saps you of will and motivation.

When my client turned toward the “direction without directions,” he was freed from the chains of his dark fate, and shown the real possibility for himself.

He became motivated to work with the expectation that something good would happen. And he began to have the eyes to recognize, the heart to receive, and hands to touch that good thing when it did finally appear

No amount of advice or coaching, no matter how good, would have changed my client’s situation until he’d had this shift in what he honestly believed was possible for him. That’s why it was critical for him to examine the Highest Authority he was faced towards.

And it’s also why it’s a great idea for you to discover what direction you are facing, yourself.

Try it for yourself

Here are those four steps again:

1. Get clear on a situation that is troubling you,
2. Discover what you really believe your fate is in that situation,
3. Ask yourself, “What’s the Highest Authority like in the world where that fate is true?,” and finally
4. Turn to the actual Highest and Most Beautiful Reality.

I hope you’ll find this helpful. And, as always, if you’re in a troubling situation and would like help, I’m available through one-on-one phone coaching. Email me at db [at] dbweb.org and we’ll set up a brief call to talk about what you might get out of us working together.

First, by how hard it is to precisely define compassion in a way that really encompasses it — and

Second, by how well you can be guided in being compassionate by simple “do and don’t” -style rules.

Today I want to talk about the experience of compassion… And to give you the first surprising thing I’ve discovered about using compassion to bring healing to yourself and to others.

What is compassion?

Of course, I’m not in any way the first person to write about compassion — it’s a BIG subject. The Buddha said that “Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others.” Some have described it as an “emotional resonance.” I think of it as “feeling for” or “feeling with” someone as they are going through difficulty.

But rather than struggle with definitions, let’s talk instead about the sensation of compassion — where the “rubber hits the road” in your experience.

How do you know if you are feeling compassion, for yourself or for someone else?

– Compassion is the “awww” moment, when your heart is moved to say “awww, that’s rough” to someone.

– Compassion feels like the “arms of your heart” reaching out to surround someone who is in difficulty.

– Compassion is a feeling of flowing from your heart to someone who is in having a hard time.

Additionally, in the moment of compassion you have stepped away from judgments about whether or not the person SHOULD or should NOT be feeling the way they feel. You’ve also have stepped away from the great advice you’d love to give them, but that they are not in a place to hear.

You are simply sitting with them (or with yourself) in the authentic acknowledgement of how difficult something is.

Compassion “feels with” the upset, not “all of” the upset

Now let’s talk about pain. How much of a person’s pain do you have to feel in order to be compassionate with them?

You probably already intuitively know that, if you are being compassionate for someone who is upset, you don’t have to get as upset as they are, or feel as agonized as they feel.

Well, here’s something that is a huge relief for some folks:

You don’t have to feel every ounce of YOUR pain and upset, either, to have compassion for yourself, and to get healed.

I like to say that this is “feeling WITH the upset, but not feeling ALL OF the upset.”

Let me explain…

A lot of healing work emphasizes the importance of feeling your feelings fully. This way of thinking says that if you are sad, you should cry with your whole heart, and if you are angry, you should express it with your whole body.

While there’s a lot to be said for this approach, it also has drawbacks. Upset feelings are often scary, and most people have no interest in feeling and expressing them fully. Therefore, those folks will never get the benefit of that kind of healing work. In fact, they run from it.

Also, the “feel it fully” approach also requires a supportive environment in which to express those feelings. It also needs competent facilitation to help you find a new meaning through that expression. These things are not always available.

If you are working with some upset of your own, it is worth knowing that you do NOT need to experience the pain, anger, fear, shame, or whatever “fully” in order to get the benefits of self-compassion, and the healing that comes with it.

This is really good news.

So how much do you need to feel it?

So how much DO you need to feel those painful feelings in order to heal?

The answer is simple:

You must step in to feeling the upset enough to know, in your heart — that is, on an immediate, emotional level — that in order to get through this, you need something more than what you’ve been able to generate on your own.

Put another way, you’ve got to experience the upset enough to feel the urgency of your need for some new resource to come to you.

If you don’t do that, the “well of compassion” won’t be able to open to you. Instead of feeling a flow of love, your experience of compassion will be dry.

Put even yet another way (don’t worry, I have plenty more): If you are completely separate from the emotions of your upset, then your heart can’t open to your need for compassion … because your heart is NOT INVOLVED. You have to involve your heart in the upset in order to feel the compassion.

But, by the same token, you DO NOT need to become absolutely overwhelmed by the feelings of the upset, either. You only need to feel the upset enough to really be present with it, and to reveal your own need.

There’s a saying in spiritual healing that “Nothing pleads with the Divine on your behalf better than your own needy heart.” Whether or not you believe in a “Divine,” I do think it’s true that an authentic admission of your need helps open up the flow of compassion, whether it comes from Somewhere Else, or from deep in your own Heart or Mind.

How to do it

Here’s how you can start building your “muscle” of opening with compassion to yourself.

First, pick some upset in your life. You may want to start with a small upset; a problem with a coworker, frustration with morning traffic, a surprise bill that came that you weren’t ready for, or some other annoyance of life that is sticking with you today. It can also be an old upset… something that happened a while ago that isn’t wrecking your life, but that you still aren’t quite complete about.

It should be big enough that you actually are upset about it, but (to start) not the biggest upset of your entire life. (You can build to that later as you start to get this circuit really working for you.)

Second, imagine yourself, standing in front of you, experiencing that upset, almost as if you are looking at someone else who has that exact same problem as you do.

Allow yourself to step away from any judgements or advice you may have for this person, and let yourself feel the need of that person’s heart for something beyond what he can give to him- or herself.

Third, begin to notice how you can gauge and control how much or how little you feel the painful feelings of this person before you. You can touch the pain a little bit, a lot, or none at all. I think of it like a “slider switch,” that I can slide up or down to increase or decrease the intensity. Experiment with coming closer to the pain, and moving further away.

As you allow yourself to move toward the upset, ask yourself, “am I connecting with this person’s pain enough yet for their need to open my flow of compassion?” Remember, you only need to experience the upset enough to get your heart to open in compassion. You may be surprised by how little suffering that takes.

Once you start to feel the compassion — the sense of “aww, that’s hard” — notice how a Blessing Current starts to flow to that “you” in front of you. It may be a small flow at first, just a trickle, but that’s okay.

Let that Blessing Current guide you in delivering a blessing to that person before you. It may simply be a touch, as if you are putting your hand on his or her heart and letting a blessing energy flow in.

Or, you may experience some sort of freeing insight, or some new way of seeing the upsetting situation.

Or it may just be a general sense of a new peacefulness around the upset, and a new will to let go, and move on.

Whatever it is, let yourself experience the good feelings of that. That’s how self-compassion can bring healing.

Being the empty cup

I once heart Mark Silver, from heartofbusiness.com, say that “It’s the empty cup that can be filled.” By acknowledging your need, without being overwhelmed by your pain, you can become that “empty cup” that attracts compassion and healing. You can even attract it from yourself… And that brings healing and peace.

And that’s too bad, because opening your heart to yourself is a critical part of any healing experience. The better you are at it, the faster and deeper you will heal from any upset.

If you know me (ether through these newsletters or from my seminars or phone coaching), you know that I’m always looking for the “secret ingredient” — the one thing in any situation that has a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

In the healing process, one “secret ingredient” — the simple thing that accelerates you toward the “healing moment” — is self-compassion.

Opening your heart to YOURSELF does more to bring about healing than just about anything else.

I’m going to share some tips, techniques and insights I’ve found have made it easier for people to access their self-compassion. (And, as a bonus, it will also make it easier for you to be compassionate to others!)

Once you know these simple steps you’ll be able to get through upsetting experiences faster, get unstuck more quickly, be able to go for what you want with your whole heart. You’ll also be able to be happier and more at peace no matter what your circumstances.

FIRST– ARE YOU BEING COMPASSIONATE FOR YOURSELF?

It can be hard to tell if you are being compassionate for yourself. Here are some clues that you are NOT being as compassionate for yourself as you could be:

CLUE ONE: You are feeling cut off from what you need. You feel cut off from any sense of being nurtured, by Something Greater or even other people. It feels like the world is on your shoulders, you are alone, and you are inadequate to the task of making it through.

CLUE TWO: You are trying to generate what you need for yourself by being smarter or working harder. If what you need can’t come to you from the Universe, you try to create it for yourself — by working harder, being smarter, and pushing yourself more.

That’s difficult, though, because if you are in an upset, you are probably ALREADY doing your best to get out of it. You ALREADY are trying harder. You ALREADY are at 100% effort… and trying harder, while painful, doesn’t really help.

CLUE THREE: You are trying to get away from your experience of what is happening.

Because it seems like there’s nowhere to turn for healing (and trying harder isn’t working), you’ll then try to get away from the experience by employing a distraction.

Different people use different distractions. You might like goofing off on the internet, or eating, or watching television. What all distractions have in common is they try to take you out of the feeling of being upset, alone, and unable to work your way out of the problem.

CLUE FOUR: You are criticizing yourself for being upset. “I shouldn’t feel this way,” “I’m just being a baby,” “I should buck up,” “I’m probably just being dramatic” — these are all self-criticisms that are signs that compassion is MISSING from how you are handling being upset.

If any of these clues seem familiar to you — if you find yourself feeling cut off, trying harder, avoiding your experience and criticizing yourself — then you have an “improvement opportunity,” and will benefit from developing your compassion toward yourself.

COMPASSION OPENS A DOOR

Opening to self-compassion breaks that cycle of loneliness, fixing, criticizing, and distracting. It “breaks the state” of simply trying to fix things, and opens you to a new energy that’s beyond your own ability to “noodle your way through.”

If you’ve ever seen someone who has just had a breakthrough, you know how they are lit up with a new energy inside of them. They have a new hope, and can see new opportunities, and can take action where they previously could not.

A new energy has come to them that is beyond what they could generate for themselves by trying harder, or going at it alone. I think of this energy as a Blessing Current… and when you are in touch with it, your heart becomes filled and you become inspired and empowered to move forward.

If you examine the process they went through to get there, you’ll find that, at some pivotal moment, they opened to compassion for themselves. Perhaps they acknowledged their need for love and opened to it. Or they acknowledged how painful a situation has been, and opened their heart to themselves. They may even have acknowledged their need to take action and set a boundary, and really put their heart fully into doing so.

As they opened to that compassion, it opened the door to the Blessing Current started to flow for them… and transformation became possible.

Opening to yourself in compassion is a way to get the flow of that Blessing Current started. Once you know how to do it, it’s something you can do at any time, no matter what else is going on.

I hope I’ve helped convince you that developing self-compassion is worth some time and effort. In the next posts I’ll share more about how you can start to open to compassion for yourself… some surprising facts about compassion… and some unexpected do’s and don’t’s of being compassionate. I’ll also share the traps of compassion that you’ll want to be able to avoid.

I’m excited to be posting this 32-minute interview with Jim and Zaina Keeley.

Jim has more concentrated, useful, practical wisdom than almost anyone I’ve ever worked with, and I make it my business to show up at most of his workshops, no matter where they are.

Jim and Zaina have been married for 10 years, and are happier together all the time. The love and the excitement of the relationship has lasted for them.

At the end of July they are running their first relationships workshop.

My future wife and I are going to this workshop, so I decided to interview them about it, and share that interview with you.

Please note: I am not being paid to tell you about this workshop. I’m going to it, and I think you might get value out of it too.

In this 32-minute interview with Jim and Zaina, they cover…

• Practical steps for growing spiritually in a relationship,
• How a relationship can go from being just a place a person gets his or her needs met to becoming a place where people grow together into their fulfillment and happiness,
• Why sharing feelings or your “truth” can sometimes turn into a fight or a session of complaining, and what to do about it,
• How the purpose of relationship communication is not just to get your point across, but to discover the next place inside of you that you need to transform to move even deeper into the relationship,
• The problem with thinking that your partner are the same person every day, and how who you partner is today asks new things of you… and how those new challenges can be catalysts for transformation,
• How Jim and Zaina “hold” each other during conflict, and avoid the major traps of “just listening” to your partner.
• How to get past the idea that “sooner or later all couples drift apart” or the other ideas that dull many relationships,
• How to listen “deeper” to what is upsetting your partner,
• The “subtle losses of heart” that happen in relationships, and how to overcome them,
• Good news about how a couple can set the intention to be ridiculously and outrageously happy together, and can keep that intention (and experience) alive through the bumps and challenges of the relationship,
• and more.

About their workshop:

Location: The workshop is happening in Auburn Massachusetts, USA. (By the way, Fawn and I are traveling from Madison, WI to this workshop, on the weekend before our wedding… We think it’s worth traveling to get to this workshop, and encourage you to think so, too.)

Date: Saturday and Sunday, July 26-27, 2008.

Price: Probably because this is the first time they’ve let this workshop, it is priced at only $150/person. (I think you can expect the price to go up dramatically in the future.)

Who can come: This workshop is open to people who are in a relationship, those who would like to be in one, or someone who is getting over a heartbreak or anyone else.

Next steps for you:

If you’d like to hear more from Jim, he has a free newsletter and many hours of free audio at his website http://howtowalkwithgod.com (Opens in a new window).

To find out more or sign up for the workshop, you can email Jim at [email protected].

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And please feel free to comment on this post!