Move out of your comfort zone to cultivate compassion

Yesterday on the Huffington Post, David Nichtern talked about the difficulty of acting compassionately. He described the feeling of it being "easy to be hard" and having to consciously focus on taking steps to help others.

According to Nichtern, a senior teacher in Shambhala Buddhism, a lot of these difficulties stem from us being hestitant to step outside of our comfort zone. Or, in other words, it's more comfortable to avoid the compassionate behaviour. He sites a few examples:

"[E]nabling someone to continue to develop destructive habits in exchange for a temporary feel-good moment -- like a parent avoiding a conflict with a rebellious teenager, giving a known drug addict money for "food," or overlooking someone abusing a child to avoid making a scene."

Nichtern prescribes "tough love" for situations like these, which can often make us uncomfortable, but it is this selflessness that he says can lead us to an "awakened heart".

Read more from David Nichtern's Cultivating Compassion: Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone.