In this article, we invite you to talk about Self-empathy, which means loving yourself and being compassionate towards yourself, which is the starting point of happiness that everyone should be able to create by themselves. But how do we love ourselves in a way that is just right, not too little to the point of unintentionally harming ourselves, or too much to the point of entering selfish mode? And what kind of self-love can create happiness? Let’s find the answer together in this matter.
The energy of happiness of people is passed on to each other.
If we look at the phenomena around us, we will find that it is impossible for us to be happy alone while others around us are suffering. Or even if we try to make everyone around us happy, we still cannot reach that happiness. If that is the case, what we say we are happy may not be true happiness.
In this regard, Professor Tung or Ms. Supaporn Pattanasiri, a speaker on intellectual well-being development activities, gave an example for us to observe the happiness that arises when we are near bright little children. Even if we are people who do not like children, we will also be happy with the innocence of the children because everyone’s happiness affects each other. When we are together, happiness should arise together because there will always be some inductive force.
The starting point of happiness for everyone starts with oneself.
Let’s take a simple example for working people. When we are in a meeting room and someone’s gloomy energy appears, the atmosphere of the meeting will immediately change because everyone is anxious, afraid, uncertain, and distrustful. Such energy will circulate in that environment. But if there is someone, especially someone who has a great impact on the meeting, such as the supervisor, who is calm and cheerful, the minds of the people there will probably relax. It will be easier to talk and exchange ideas. This reinforces the fact that human happiness energy can be transmitted.
Taking care of yourself to be happy is the beginning of happiness in others as well. So if you want to see a change, everyone’s duty is to try to maintain their own happy energy. Just this is the same as taking care of others. It seems easy, but it’s hard to do. Because things like this, we have to practice regularly so that our minds are ready to be like that automatically.
Corporate Happiness
When talking at the organizational level, giving importance to the “heart” of employees or taking care of them to be a happy organization is a challenge for organizations in this era. Ms. Rattana Wacharasathian, Assistant Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Loxley Public Company Limited, shared her experience that when she set the principle that she should increase the care for the minds of employees, the question that followed was how to take care of each other. She tried to search for information until she came across the Thai Health Promotion Foundation’s curriculum on Resilience at Workplace or mental rehabilitation in the workplace. She found that the foundation of mental rehabilitation lies in self-love or Self-Empathy.
This is considered a new psychology that allows access to mental states or a science called Mindfulness Compassion. When employees participate in the activity, they can apply the techniques and various things to their work and daily lives. In addition to receiving tools to take care of the mind, it is also considered a soft skill training for employees. In addition to training, there are also many activities that allow employees to access this subject, such as flower arranging, watercolor painting, deep listening training, or hugging themselves. All of these may seem superficially like recreational activities, but they contain tools to take care of the mind and heart that can be applied in real life.
The happiness that comes from hugging yourself
Professor Tung added that Mindfulness Compassion is about brain functioning or the relationship between the brain and changes in human emotions because humans like touch, warmth, and soft sounds, which are characteristics of mammals. Practicing mindfulness compassion through various activities creates an atmosphere of warmth in a way that creates a feeling of relaxation.
And the matter that requires “mindfulness” is to come back to be aware of who we are, what we want, who we are with at this time, which will ultimately lead to the “revival” of the mind, even if we have “slumped” before. Ajarn Tung also tells a simple technique that allows us to show love to ourselves by “hug ourselves” by putting our hands on or on our hearts. Try to really know that our hands are on our hearts, give love to our hearts, and then breathe and thank our hearts that we still have hearts that are beating. The simple principle is not to pay attention to the outside world, just pay attention to our hearts. Doing this and feeling how you feel is self-awareness, which can happen without taking a long time and can change immediately.
If your life is slow today, just make a list.
When the heart starts to “fall”, we can love ourselves by not letting ourselves and our hearts “sink”. The easiest way is to start by looking back at what we are facing. We will see that life has both things we like and things we don’t. Often, we accidentally want to control things we don’t like because we forget that besides likes/dislikes, there are also things we can control and things we can’t. For example, if it has been raining at irregular times recently, even if we don’t like it, we can’t control the weather. When we can’t control it, we shouldn’t focus on it too much because it will waste energy. It is recommended to spend time doing things we can control instead, such as finding a raincoat or an umbrella.
Or on days when life seems to be slowing down, try making a daily list of things that make you smile that day. Start with 10 things. It may seem like too much, but if you think about it, you will find that the things that make you smile are small things that are real and recognizable, such as today it didn’t rain, today the coffee was great, today the boss didn’t complain, today a friend told a funny story. Then go back and read it again and try to smile again. Try doing it for 5-7 days in a row and you will find that you can still smile every day. Finally, invite yourself to set aside 5-10 minutes a day for yourself. Ask your family or someone close to you that you would like to take some time for yourself, turn off your phone, and do something you like, such as looking at the sky, sipping coffee, noticing pleasant sounds, or the wind that touches your face. Just this should help lift your spirits, at least a little.
Every day is not a good day, but there are good things happening every day.
Another thing that might help us a lot is to think about the saying that every day is not a good day, but there is something good in every day. Some people often beat themselves up when they find out that today is not their good day and think that it is the downfall of their life.
But if you look closely, you will find that there are small good things happening. Change your focus to that point and find a way to recharge from that point instead. It may increase your happiness energy. Just change your focus to something that we can do easily because it happens anyway. And everyone has the same amount of time to do it, but we often don’t make the same use of it or don’t know how to use it. Self-compassion, simple self-love should be made basic, something that everyone can do it themselves.
#Happiness is growing #ThaiHealth #LifeTalk #HappyGrowth #Decoding the happiness of working people
You can choose to watch the program in YouTube format at: LIFE TALK HAPPY GROWTH : SELF EMPATHY IN ACTION
