Please see below key recent compassion-related change.
See also:
- What's New? - Compassion
- What's Changing? - Animals
- What's Changing? - Empathy
- What's Changing? - Kindness
April 2024
- To be able to face the unpleasantries of life, we need to be kind and forgiving to ourselves. Although words such as ‘love’, ‘compassion’ and ‘kindness’ are sometimes seen as soft skills, they are, in truth, hard skills that are vital for our survival and wellbeing. Research shows an especially strong association between self-compassion and wellbeing among older individuals.
April 2023
- “Compassion,” Karen Armstrong wrote in her meditation on the true meaning of the Golden Rule, “asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else”, noted Maria Popova.
September 2022
- Russell Kolts, a psychologist and expert in compassion-focused therapy, encourages people who are experiencing suffering to ask themselves questions such as: given my history and what I know about myself, does it make sense that I would feel this way? and given this, what would be helpful for me right now? This entails a reorientation toward the self with understanding and compassion.
August 2022
- The psychologist and self-compassion expert Kristin Neff defined self-compassion as being open to and moved by one’s own suffering, experiencing feelings of caring and kindness toward oneself, taking an understanding, non-judgemental attitude toward one’s inadequacies and failures, and recognising that one’s experience is part of the common human experience. Self-compassion involves three closely connected components: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
June 2022
- Further reading:
May 2022
- Research suggested that employees who work for compassionate managers are 25% more engaged in their jobs, 20% more committed to the organisation, and 11% less likely to burn out. Yet many organisations still have rigid hierarchies and treat their employees more like resources than humans, requiring excessively long hours, pressuring people for unrealistic results, and treating them as if they were all exactly the same, without regard for their individuality.
April 2022
- During the pandemic, many leaders experienced extreme demands for compassion at a time when there was no room for compromising on outcomes. As a result, many fell into the trap of thinking in terms of a binary choice between compassion or performance, Based on its ongoing work and research at companies around the world, HBR concluded learned that middle managers were often the ones feeling that tension most acutely, as they felt torn between performance demands from above and calls for compassion from below.
February 2022
- For the HBR, talking to yourself in a self-compassionate tone can support the achievement of goals in multiple ways. For one, it can help normalise any negative feelings around goals because it acknowledges that discomfort is a natural part of the human experience. Self-compassion can also allow you to let go of paralysing perfectionism because it leaves room for human fallibility and frailty - the acknowledgement that we all make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay. And self-compassion can help you to stick with your goals by heightening your ability to recover from setbacks instead of getting stuck in endless rumination about what went wrong. In short, self-compassion could be the difference between giving up on goals (or avoiding them completely) and achieving them step by step - even when that may require a few steps back before you move forward again.
January 2022
- Using data from thousands of leaders, employees, and companies in nearly a hundred countries, the authors of Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way claimed that when leaders bring the right balance of compassion and wisdom to the job, they foster much higher levels of employee engagement, performance, loyalty, and well-being in their people.
December 2021
- When we're showing compassion, we have a good understanding of what the other person is experiencing and a willingness to act. Our understanding of the other person’s experience is greater than with empathy because we pull on our emotional awareness as well as rational understanding. Compassion occurs when we take a step away from empathy and ask ourselves what we can do to support the person who is suffering. In this way, compassion is an intention versus an emotion.
August 2021
- For Psyche, self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same kindness and consideration with which you’d treat a loved one. Just as compassion begins by recognising another’s pain, self-compassion begins by recognising when you, yourself, are suffering. A self-compassionate response, according to a leading self-compassion researcher at the University of Texas, entails three critical ingredients: self-kindness: offering yourself warmth and understanding rather than self-judgment; common humanity: remembering that all human beings make mistakes and experience pain, rather than feeling isolated in your suffering; andm mindfulness: observing your thoughts and emotions in a balanced way, without becoming consumed by them.
- Across the globe, healthcare providers were on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis. They worked around the clock, experiencing chronic stress, and even trauma, They fought for patients’ lives, for adequate equipment, and against conspiracy theories. It’s perhaps little wonder that many experienced burnout and compassion fatigue. This can happen when someone has experienced so much empathy for and absorbed so much of others’ anguish that they themselves begin to have trauma reactions. Those reactions can include things like emotional numbing, physical illness, and feelings of hopelessness.
March 2021
- New Zealand's parliament passed landmark legislation granting three days paid leave for couples who experience a miscarriage or stillbirth. The MP who put forward the bill said New Zealand should lead the way on "progressive and compassionate legislation."
December 2020
- Harvard Business Review argued that, now more than ever, it’s imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion. Compassion is the quality of having positive intentions and real concern for others. Compassion in leadership creates stronger connections between people. It improves collaboration, raises levels of trust, and enhances loyalty. In addition, studies find that compassionate leaders are perceived as stronger and more competent. A mindset of wise compassion is the most effective, and humane, way to support people through difficult times. As we collectively face challenges, we’ll need to make tough decisions. We should all strive to do these hard things in a human way.
- Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that research shows that people with high self-compassion show greater motivation to correct their errors. They tended to work harder after failing an important test, for instance, and were more determined to make up for a perceived moral transgression, such as betraying a friend’s trust. Self-compassion, it seems, can create a sense of safety that allows us to confront our weaknesses and make positive changes in our lives, rather than becoming overly self-defensive or wallowing in a sense of hopelessness.
September 2020
- Maria Popova notes that even the most compassionate among us have one sizeable blind spot: the self. Our culture’s epidemic of self-criticism has left us woefully unskilled at self-compassion - that essential anchor of sanity, which both grounds and elevates our spirit. In a short exercise, The School of Life offers a daily practice to help is re-learn the value of calculated moments of self-compassion; and to appreciate the role of self-care in a good, ambitious and fruitful life.
- McKinsey pointed out that numerous studies show that in a business-as-usual environment, compassionate leaders perform better and foster more loyalty and engagement by their teams. However, compassion becomes especially critical during a crisis. While a crisis’s early days might seem like the time for leaders to put their head down and exhibit control, it is just as critical to tune in to personal fears and anxieties so as to be able to turn outward to help employees and colleagues grapple with their own reactions. This isn’t easy, but this introspection and projection of care is critical for connecting and dealing with people’s immediate needs and setting the stage for business recovery.
August 2020
- In Without Compassion, Resilient Leaders Will Fall Short, HBR warned that, if you’re an exceptionally strong and resilient (business) leader, you should recognise that you are the unusual one and don’t judge others based on yourself. Instead, think about what prepared you for the experiences that have made you stronger. Then apply that thinking to others, who haven’t been trained as you have. Take that “What’s wrong with them?” energy and use it to create an environment for them to be stronger. Don’t be so quick to judge them as failures. You have no idea what else may be going on for them. And don’t forget the genetic lottery - some of your stability may be inborn, and you can’t take credit for that.
April 2020
- For the Harvard Business Review, even under forced lockdown it is not a time to move away from kindness and caring, even if our brains nudge us in that direction. “It’s important to try to find ways to remain open to compassion, even when we’re overtaxed.” according to the co-authors of Awakening Compassion at Work, who have done research that shows that compassion correlates with your own level of job satisfaction and the degree to which you find your work meaningfu, though it can be hard to find and show empathy for coworkers when your own cognitive resources are depleted.
- Further reading:
January 2020
- Stanford University professor Dr. James Doty's research demonstrated the physical and mental health benefits of showing compassion and kindness. Our brain's default "rest mode" is chronically hijacked and placed in what Doty calls "threat mode" because of our stressful, busy lifestyles. That threat mode is triggered by our sympathetic nervous system, which releases inflammatory proteins in response to stress. Research shows that being kind to others flips the switch and places our bodies into parasympathetic nervous system instead.
November 2019
- When many people grow up they realise a horrific reality: we exist in a world of seeming indifference to almost everything we are, think, say or do. We might be in late adolescence when the point really hits home. We might be in a bedsit at university or wandering the streets of the city at night on our own - when it occurs to us, with full force, how negligible a thing we are in the wider scheme. No one in the crowds we pass knows anything about us. Our welfare is of no concern to them.
October 2019
- Further reading:
April 2019
- For Big Think, the truth is we aren't as compassionate as we'd like to believe, because of a paradox of large numbers. Compassion is a product of our sociality as primates. In his book, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, Peter Singer stated that "human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human", and that "we can be sure that we restrained our behaviour toward our fellows before we were rational human beings. Social life requires some degree of restraint. A social grouping cannot stay together if its members make frequent and unrestrained attacks on one another". Even after hundreds of centuries of evolution, when tragedy strikes beyond our community, our compassion wanes as the number of displaced, injured, and dead mounts. The drop-off in commiseration has been termed the collapse of compassion. The term has also been defined in The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science: ". . . people tend to feel and act less compassionately for multiple suffering victims than for a single suffering victim."
March 2019
- The School of Life believes that, to survive in the high-pressured conditions of modernity, we have little option but to grow up to be highly adept at self-criticism, at swiftly picking up on our errors and taking stock of our short-comings. We learn to take responsibility and to be open to feedback. But so good are we at this that we’re in danger of falling prey to an excessive version of self-criticism: a form of self-flagellation which teaches us nothing new and inspires only depression and underperformance. We have taken self-criticism too far when it no longer has any effect on our level of achievement, when it simply saps our morale and our will to get out of bed. It’s at this point that we need to carve out some time to sample an emotional state of which many of us are profoundly suspicious: self-compassion.
February 2019
- Self-compassion has been defined as being kind to one’s self and being able to use self-reassurance and soothing in times of adversity. It includes being non-judgemental about one’s self and recognising one’s experience as part of the human condition. a 2019 academic study found that self-compassion and its cultivation in psychological interventions are associated with improved mental health and well-being. However, as the underlying processes for this are not well understood, the study randomly assigned 135 participants to study the effect of two short-term exercises. Increased self-reported-state self-compassion, affiliative affect, and decreased self-criticism were found after both self-compassion exercises and the positive-excitement condition. However, a psychophysiological response pattern of reduced arousal (reduced heart rate and skin conductance) and increased parasympathetic activation (increased heart rate variability) were unique to the self-compassion conditions.
- Further reading:
December 2018
- The School of Life believes that we need to carve out some time to sample an emotional state of which many of us are profoundly suspicious: self-compassion. We’re suspicious because we are nervously over-familiar with the risks associated with self-pity. Many of us will have given up on the last traces of self-pity somewhere in late adolescence, but the condition remains vivid. We are aware that, by being kind to ourselves, we may over-indulge our undeserving characters, miss valuable insights and ruin our potential. However, because depression and self-disgust are serious enemies too, we need to re-learn the value of calculated moments of self-compassion; we need to appreciate the role of self-care in a good, ambitious and fruitful life.
- Giving selectively to a few charities is better than a fragmented approach. Trying to take on too many needs and problems of other people can lead to “compassion fatigue”, warned Quartz.
October 2018
- Human empathy can’t - or won’t - keep up with tragedies like the tsunami in Indonesia, warned Quartz. “Compassion collapse” means that people often care more about the tragedies of individuals than of many people.
- Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax works with people at the last stage of life (in hospice and on death row). She shared in a TED talk what she's learned about compassion in the face of death and dying, and a deep insight into the nature of empathy.
- Swami Dayananda Saraswati unravelled during a TED talk the parallel paths of personal development and attaining true compassion. He walked us through each step of self-realisation, from helpless infancy to the fearless act of caring for others.
- Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf combined during a TED talk the teachings of the Qur'an, the stories of Rumi, and the examples of Muhammad and Jesus, to demonstrate that only one obstacle stands between each of us and absolute compassion -- ourselves.
July 2018
- A Quartz writer argued that feeling compassion and respect for the creatures around us doesn’t necessarily preclude eating meat. Whether we’re vegans or devout carnivores, our actions will sometimes have ramifications that cause harm to other living things. What’s important, the writer believes, is interrogating our individual ethics and responsibilities.
- An article on HumanProgress argued that compassion is the emotion that orchestrates need-based help - help toward those worse off than oneself. Our ancestors lived in a world without social or medical insurance, and so they benefit from covering each other's shortfalls through mutual help. If your neighbours are starving and you have food, you can save their life by sharing with them. Later, when the situation is reversed and they share their food with you, your life is saved.
Pre-2018
- "Nobody foresaw the world shortage of respect", claimed Theodore Zeldin, so compassion and empathy are perhaps our best responses to the growing realisation that even as we watch each other post and connect and feed and comment and tweet, what goes on in other people's heads is becoming ever more puzzling.
- Charles Darwin seems to have thought so, believing that compassion for other sentient beings was the highest moral virtue. This informed other aspects of his world view, such as his passionate opposition to slavery.
- The term "compassion" has fallen out of touch with reality, argued journalist Krista Tippett, who deconstructs the meaning of compassion through stories, and proposes a new definition, linking it with kindness, "curiosity without assumptions", empathy, forgiveness, beauty, generosity and presence.
- So let's find and honour and reward meaning-makers and empathisers. Welcome as they are, charters of compassion are just the start - perhaps we need open-source universities of the intimate, "where all generations can exchange experience, culture and hope".2
- Karen Armstrong, making her wish when accepting her TED Prize, called for a global charter of compassion. Her call for universal outreach chimes well with the idea of xenophilia. She believes that we can all follow the golden rule (i.e "do unto others...), but that we need to now move beyond mere toleration of the other, towards active appreciation of the other. Hers is a fine idea, as long as (a) it can be secular/humanist as well as religious in tone and (b) it doesn't just evolve from a wish into a wishlist - i.e. it will need to specify what tangible benefits might adopting the charter accrue to individuals and societies.
- Strangers can "see" a person's trustworthy genes through their behaviours, suggested a new study, which found that a single genetic change makes a person seem more compassionate and kind to others.
- The Charter for Compassion, from Karen Armstrong's 2008 wish ,was designed to create a ripple effect for years to come.
- "New Compassion" argued for more equality, kindness and giving.
1. Theodore Zeldin, Intimate History of Humanity, p28;
2. Intimate History of Humanity, p31
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