Isn't that curious

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Lead with curiosity, not judgment. This applies to yourself and to others. Think of a grandmother - a grandmother is full of love and compassion for her grandchildren. She loves them without conditions, no strings attached.She takes care of her grandchildren without needing anything in return. She cares selflessly and she has only the children’s best interest in mind. As she loves her grandchildren, she won’t allow self-destructive behavior and will step in when necessary. But she will always do this with the utmost care and love.

Why be compassionate

My journey to compassion

Kept ignorning it, took a few stabs. But honest compassion to reduce the suffering of others not till re-reading the Joy Of Happiness and the sublime states. Some how it really clicked.

Compassion

Compassion is about removing suffering, and accepting people as they are. This applies both to others and to yourself.

When someone throws a rock at you, you don’t get mad at the rock, you get mad at the person. But no one wants to throw a rock at you they likely did it due to their suffering. So, just as you don’t get mad at the rock, don’t get mad at the person, get mad at their suffering.

Compassion can be broken down with a time dimension.

Time Behavior Practice Behavior Definition
Past Forgiveness Humility Give up hope for a better past
Present Acceptance Gratefulness Recognizing you have received more then your fair share
Future Hope Patience Believe the future can be better then the present
  • When people behave poorly (in your mind), it is due to their suffering.
  • Compassion clarifies the person’s suffering, not the person, is the source of the problem. Suffering is unacceptable. The person is acceptable (see getting to yes, hard on problems soft on people).
  • Love, especially as applied to children, is the highest form of compassion a 11/10.
  • Sounds like the fundamental attribution error: When you do something wrong, you attribute to circumstance, when others do thing wrong you attribute you malice/incompetence/personality.
  • Being compassionate takes the focuss off the ego, which is super important as the ego brings you very little.

Judgment vs Curiosity

Judgment throws up barriers and causes us to hide the truth which can lead to guilt and shame. Curiosity is gentle and helps us find what is going on. Compassion reduces judgment, reducing the barrier to compassion.

Compassionate Consequences

We often think of rewards and punishments, but punishments are less effective then rewards. So, what should happen if we don’t follow our rule/reach our goal (do what we want, etc, etc)? What would grandma do?

She’d get curious (aka have a retro!). Instead of assuming that breaking the rule was a bad thing, she’d dig in and reflect on if it was a good thing or a bad thing. If it was the right thing to do - perfect! If it was not the right thing to do, then we should reflect on why that was and why we made the wrong call.

The source of compassionate consequences

Assuming we don’t do what we wanted - the consequence should be 6 minute reflection.

  1. 2m - when we didn’t do what we wanted what did we get (pleasure, etc)
  2. 2m - what was the reason we wanted to follow the rule
  3. 2m - was it worth it.

An advanced reader will notice, there are 2 cases to breaking the rule 1) deliberately 2) mindlessly. If it was broken mindlessly, then the most useful thing will be to mindful the next time we wish to break the rule. This reflection practice primes us for that. If it was broken deliberately, but we made a bad call, then further reflection on that is helpful, and it will help up again in the future.

Mindfulness/Call Right Call - Next Time Wrong Call - Next Time
Mindful Well done - Keep it up Doh - Think through the trade off
Mindless Got lucky - Make sure to think before acting Snap - Think before acting

Cutting ourselves slack vs slacking off

Did I do the best I could do?

What could have I actually done that would have been better than what I did?

  • Must be indisputably a better choice than the one you made.
  • Must be a realistic option - and it may not depend on knowledge you didn’t have at the time.
  • Must have been available to you in real time. That is, nothing prevented you from choosing the better option — you simply made the lesser choice.

Curious questions for mental pain and its antidotes

See mental pain

Retro?

Lack of attention