When you show compassion for someone, you’re giving them a gift. You are, in fact, endorsing them for what they feel and what they face. Whether you’ve been there or not, whether you understand fully what they’re going through or not doesn’t matter. You’re giving them the gift of understanding, of love, of acceptance and endorsement.

Empathy, on the other hand, is more of a passive approach to caring which, while useful, doesn’t give the recipient all that much. To develop compassion for others, one must fully develop compassion for yourself, your faults, your limitations, and your failures. When you can make yourself right or make the universe right for what you’ve had to go through and even laugh and enjoy it as a memory, you can then grant others a similar level of acceptance.

Compassion is an essential skill in coaching, but one that can’t be all that experienced until one is healed. Compassion occurs when one has no need whatsoever to compare or feel threatened or influenced by the other person’s concerns.
If we see ourselves in someone else and we are afraid of what we see, it’s difficult to feel compassion for them.

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From The Distinctionary developed by Thomas J. Leonard, Linda Talley, and Coach U, Inc. Modified by LMK.

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