The Connection between Empathy and Mindfulness

The Connection between Empathy & Mindfulness

Each person has their own story created by their past, their perspective, learned traits and fear. We need to understand everyone's story is different. Everyone's story contains fear, struggle, hurt, sadness, etc.

Even though everyone's story is different, we are all doing the best we can with the story we have and most of us pretend everything is ok even when it's not.

Eventually,the cracks appear and the negativity comes leaking out. We are all human and go through this. We all have cracks in our life.

A Mindfulness technique would be to notice everyone around you and empathize. Everyone is suffering or has suffered and the future will hold more of it. We all have circumstances in our lives that we can't change. These circumstance will come out of no where and leave us shocked, scared and hurt. They will change our lives, we will become vulnerable and scared.

When we realize we are all connected, we are all human and we all suffer we can find more empathy with each other.

When we feel the hurt, anger, judgment rise into our throats then we must take a minute to breathe and ask ourselves is the action or response I'm about to take based on love or fear?

We have a moment between our impulse to act/react and before we take action. What will you do with that moment, is the important question? This is my hardest task. I can mentally feel I don't want to act or that I will regret it but I do it anyway because I let fear over ride my decision making. I need to work on these moments and when I do, I feel more at peace and make better choices.

In that brief moment between impulse and action,the story flashes in front of us. The story we have been telling ourselves based on our past that we're not good enough or worthy enough and we take action without slowing down enough to think is my action based on love or fear? Take the extra time and you will be mindful. Be mindful of what your feeling at the moment both physically and emotionally. Be mindful means feeling the emotions but doesn't mean to just react or be impulsive.

For more information please visit Diane's website: www.dlcounseling.com

or email Diane at [email protected]