Five Ways to Feel More Love and Compassion |

This is a guest post by a new blogger friend, Beth Martel, I have that goes well with my blog…especially a series I did a few years ago called “Tips to a Happier You in 2012” Click that if you’d like to go back and read it.

Here’s Beth’s guest post today. Enjoy!

Love and compassion are the two things that we all need and we all deserve. It is something that we give in order to get. It all starts from within and spreads like some rays of the sun brightening up the whole sky and giving each person hope that after every thunder, comes rain and after every rain, comes a rainbow.
However, it is often difficult to show love and compassion to people. Here are a few tips which will bring the loving and more compassionate side out of you:

1) LOVE YOURSELF:

In order to love others and understand their feelings, the first step is to love yourself. There are times when you indulge in self- analysis more than anything and blame yourself for everything bad that has happened in your life. You need to stop doing that; you need to learn that flaws are what make you unique.
So even if you don’t like yourself much at times, still act like you do. Nurture yourself, eat healthy and do things which will make you feel stronger and better about yourself. Here is a list of what you can do for self-love:
Meditation
Exercise
Smile at yourself when you see your face in the mirror every morning

2) PRACTISE EMPATHY:
Empathizing with others is the key to feel the compassion more deeply. We all have empathy within but we often forget how to use it due to the much practical world we live where you get so busy in your life that you forget about the pain and suffering of the people around you.
In order to keep the empathy within you alive, start imagining the pain of the people around you. For example, when you are outside and you see a homeless person sitting at the corner of a road helplessly, try to put yourself in his shoes and imagine if the life that he is living was yours instead. This will help your heart to soften and let compassion flow for others.

3) JUST LIKE ME:
Before you judge a person or blame them for what they did or said, and find differences between you two, you should try and think that the other person may be going through a bad day just like you, and he may be seeking happiness just like you. Everybody has their ups and downs, highs and lows and happy days and bad days just like you. So slow down and don’t rush when you find someone unreasonably rude, cranky or did something which is apparently unacceptable to you.

4) SPREADING SMILES:
Everybody is either going through an emotional breakdown or a financial crisis or some sort of problem that they are coping with, that they often forget to smile. They need someone to tell them that they are doing their best, or that they will get what they are trying to achieve or some sort of appreciation.
Make sure if you see a person striving, tell them “You can and you will do it” or tell your mom and dad “you are the best parents in the whole wide world.” These words may seem to be doing little good but I must tell you that they are like the ultimate energy boosters for people and as soon as you say something like this will put a HUGE smile on their faces which will eventually result in a happy YOU.

5) HELP OTHERS AND BE KIND:
Make it a habit to do something each day to ease the pain and problems of the people who are around you. This will help you to contribute to making this world a better place to live in and people will feel more loved and valued by these little kind gestures of yours.
For example, you can pay for a meal of a poor man who looks hungry or gift your grand-parent who has blood pressure a blood pressure machine, or you can offer the garbage man a glass of water. Or just do the dishes and prepare breakfast for your mom before she enters the kitchen.
You can always find a way to help others, it will not only make them feel loved and understood but give you a feeling of accomplishment and contentment too.

Author Bio: beth-martel