Compassion makes you happy

How nice is the feeling of being understood by others! Solving conflicts with compassion helps our quality of life.

What is compassion?

Compassion must have something to do with FEELING, a feeling for others and to share with others.

Synonyms are:

Compassion - feeling condolences - empathy - sensitivity for others - feeling compassion - feeling - feeling sorry for someone - showing tact and understanding - actually feeling sympathy and empathy for others.

Wikipedia says that this includes the ability to respond appropriately to other people's feelings. This can be done, for example, with pity, expressing mourning and possibly willingness to help.

It is interesting that the basis of compassion - or empathy - is self-awareness. This means that the better and more openly a person is able to deal with their own emotions, the better they can interpret the feelings of others and react constructively to them.

What compassion is NOT:

Indifference - cold-heartedness - hard-heartedness or heartlessness.

Since we also know such reactions in our society, we have to admit that compassion can be a hot topic, which can often lead to conflicts. If there are - often also unconsciously - fears

associated with us that cause such feelings of rejection, it can lead to destructive reactions.

Self-awareness as a basic competence

Da die Selbstwahrnehmung ein so wichtiges Element für unser Mitgefühl ist, scheint es angebracht, darüber einige Gedanken zu machen.

Since self-awareness is such an important element in our compassion, it seems worthwhile to think about it.

Self-awareness, i.e. the perception of myself, is essential for the formation of self-confidence. This leads to an understanding of the external perception, i.e. the perception of another person. The sum of these self-perceptions forms our self-image. Our self-esteem (BLOG) is of course closely connected with this.

Our senses combined with information from the environment shape our understanding of ourselves and form our self-image into adulthood. However, this can change far into old age and hopefully develop positively.

Our understanding of our body (structure and functions) leads to our body image. This can lead to disruptions, even distortion, denial or repression, and thus self-deception, which can lead to diseases such as anorexia and excessive sense of shame, for example, because of unreached images. Social incompetence is then associated with this.

It is therefore understandable that love, which leads to self-love, is an extremely important element, where every responsible person - parents and educators - has to be smart in order to implant this love in their counterpart. (see blog about Love Languages)

Good role models are important

Each of them has role models. If they are good, we benefit from them. If they are close to us, then our love tank can stay full. But unfortunately there are many children - I experience this again and again when teaching - who are insufficiently loved and therefore show fearful reactions that sometimes indicate a lot of inner aggressions.

It is astonishing which ’mountains’ you can climb with children if you raise them properly, treat them with compassion and love. The more their love tank is filled, the stronger and more mature they will be in life.

How can we fill our love tank?

Where did you, dear reader, find a source of love? In your life partner? In your best friend? How do you fill your love tank? Is it perhaps a tendency to enjoyment (addiction) that has crept in, or a flight into a media world where some dopamine (happiness hormone) is to be expected? (BLOG)

My role model

My own role model is JESUS himself. I immediately feel accepted by HIM. He also accepts me with my mistakes. And He always surprises me with the care and love He shows me every day.

The idea that Jesus always had the power to defend himself leads to a deeper understanding of the compassion he mjust have had for us: He really wanted to give us all a chance to be saved.

What we can learn from JESUS

Those who have the privilege to read and study the stories of Jesus in the Gospels already have access to His kind of compassion and love.

No wonder many people have always followed Him. With Him they could fill up their love tank. Jesus had deep compassion and feelings for those around him. He immediately recognized their needs and desires. He knew that they were afraid and without orientation, like sheep without a shepherd.

Countless times it drove Him to heal their physical and mental injuries, to forgive their sins and to strengthen their hearts and heal illnesses. His touch alone brought healing. No injury was stronger than He could handle. His compassion led Him to countless deeds and also words with which He wanted to make God's love understandable to His fellow men.

Compassion in conflicts

Jesus' relationship with Jewish authorities was somewhat complex. He took time for the Pharisee Nicodemus (Joh 3), He healed the daughter of the synagogue leader Jairus (Mk 5) and He was often invited to eat with the Pharisees (Lk 7 & 14). They all needed His love, His compassion. Still, they followed Him at every turn and set traps to outsmart Him with crafty questions.

He wept over the Jewish leaders (Mt 23). His compassion was unprecedented, despite challenges and conflicts. His offer of grace had no limits.

Finding your way around in today's world is a major challenge for most people. The information overload prevents many from finding their meaning in life. Distraction here and there. What do I actually want? Isn't it love, real love that interests me? Even find a source of love? I want to understand better what our short life is all about. This is exactly where JESUS helps us.

The love of Jesus

Jesus' mindset (Phil 2) and His thinking and attitudes show his selfless love that made him willing to die even for us. He let himself be humiliated to death without defending himself. How great must His love for us, for you, for me have been! That is the love that I need in my life. It leads to the highest quality of life. It enables you to live a life with the most mature compassion, for the blessing of the environment.

Jesus makes an offer to all of us. He opens His source of love to us and wants to make it a reality in our lives. How can this happen?

Growing in Christ

Through his death on the cross, Jesus triumphed over the power of evil. The enemy's powers can be overcome by HIM. If we strengthen our relationship with Him, He can also share with us His victory over evil. Through this we will receive His peace, joy and assurance of His love. What a quality of compassion can be expected!

The Holy Spirit then dwells in us and gives us strength every day. This frees us from all of our legacy problems. Our life gains meaning and quality of life.

If we cultivate this relationship with Christ on a daily basis, then our fears are replaced by love, more and more every day. Through community care in prayer, in his word, in devotion and thinking about his presence and guidance, we experience happiness, a joy of life that we never want to exchange.

Our whole environment will notice that we have a full love tank that extends to our surroundings. Our social fears turn into compassion and sympathy. Our self-competence and social competence, called EQ (BLOG), will increase and become a blessing for everyone around us.

The Bible speaks of a fruit that then shows itself. In Galatians chapter 5: 22-23 we read about this fruit:
But the fruit of the spirit is:

LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, FRIENDLINESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF-CONTROL

Which of these quality features would you like to have yourself? Select 3 of them.

The good news is: since this is not several fruit but one fruit, you will receive all of these gifts at the same time. Isn't that a sensational offer?

Knowing yourself loved conveys new powers. Feeling like a child of God and being cared for and guided by JESUS gives deep joy and strength to bear all the daily burdens. With HIM new worlds of relationships open up. Suddenly I can deal with difficult people and situations much better. Thank God.

All we can do is to spend time with Jesus, get to know Him better, choose Him and open our hearts to Him so that we can plant these qualities.

If I can support you, I would be very happy to do so. You can contact me at any time. (ernst.zwiker@yahoo.com)

May our dear Lord bless you

Typically Toxic Topics 1-5

There are ways, sometimes wondrous ways, that lead out of all the toxic areas of life into a better future! Do not miss that !

Break the Cycle of Toxic Thinking

As a reminder: as soon as a thought is conscious, it can work down to the level of the genes. During a conscious thought process, thoughts become unstable and directed in a positive or negative direction. They always change. Even if the content of a thought does not change, it will still be overwritten. New proteins solidify the thought. The thoughts either get better or worse, no one remains neutral.

Hope you have been able to check out the previous blogs on the subject. If not, here they are:

TOX1 (Introduction)  TOX2 (Stress)  TOX3 (Brain)  TOX4 (Conversion)

1. Dealing with Toxic Thoughts

Thoughts can make us sick or well. It is always beneficial to analyze your own thoughts so that pride, anger, rebellion, self-pity, and ingratitude can be identified. It can also be used to record addictions: gambling addiction, critical addiction, food addiction or porn addiction.

Supporting analytical questions:

• Do your thoughts often revolve around entertainment, films; are they a little messy?

• Are there thoughts that arise often and are stressful?

• Would it be an advantage to write them down, structure them and possibly draw a mind map?

• Reflect on this and ask yourself if there is some real guilt in it that requires forgiveness? Compare thoughts with your principles and values. Are there any discrepancies? What would a solution look like? How would real love show in it?

• What can be done to replace the negative with something positive? How would that look in practice?

While toadstools look beautiful, it doesn't hide the fact that eating them means destruction. It is not so easy to see from the front for every toxic thought or feeling.

2. Dealing with toxic emotions

Sure, emotions and thoughts cannot be separated. Psychosomatics shows that feelings have a strong influence. They shouldn't be suppressed, repressed or even denied. As a basic concept, there are only two directions of feeling: love or fear.

Love :

It includes emotions such as joy, peace, trust, care, contentment, patience, kindness, gentleness, humility.

Fear :

It includes emotions such as anger, hate, anger, fear, guilt, shame, aloofness, depression, disorientation, pride.

While the love-related emotions have a positive effect on the organism, the others cause the body to defend itself, to go into protection.

The body is attuned to behavioral goals through emotions. This process is important because it is how our traits, talents and abilities are formed.

Those who do not learn to deal with toxic emotions will one day be billed for it.

Further analytical questions:

• Which values, attitudes and beliefs mostly influence your decisions?

• Are happy or painful memories recognizable? How could these feelings be described?

• By writing down many things become conscious and can thus be viewed from a distance.

• Do you notice that areas may still be suppressed? Are frustrations hidden that could somehow have an impact?

• Being able to express emotions is high school. We all have to learn that. The feelings are easier to reveal to a friend when you can stand by them yourself.

The more someone has lived in toxic feelings, the more challenging the exit. Small steps without giving up, steadily forward, will lead to liberation. With strong-willed natures, things can sometimes go a lot faster. Someone who promotes their frontal lobe becomes strong-willed (NEWSTART PLUS).

3. Dealing with bad words

Words are important and powerful, but also dangerous because they can be tremendously destructive. They reflect our inner attitude and values, our temperament and our character. Those who are used to controlling thoughts can also tend to choose their words.

People of integrity speak what they are convinced of. The words of the wise are valued. A fool can be recognized by his words. Redundant, useless, and irrelevant words indicate a dull, insignificant background. Words are like seeds sown. What will happen to it What is the harvest like?

Depending on our temperament, we tend to exaggerate, too many and often interesting words (sanguine), or too few but well-thought-out expressions (melancholics), or too violent, directive instructions (cholerics) or soothing, balanced, take-it- easy words (phlegmatic).

Word choice questions

• Which topics do you quickly convert into words, mostly without any control?

• Are these topics positively proven? What makes the choice of words wise and unwise? Is the harvest looking good?

• Can my words from today or yesterday be represented graphically? The constructive on the one hand, the problematic on the other? Are you keeping yourself in balance? Which predominate? What are the motives behind it?

• How could the negative words be replaced by positive ones? How would that sound? Which attitude would make it easier for me to communicate better?

• How about the resolution from now on to pay attention to the attitude, especially in difficult situations, to revise it and only then to make the choice of words? Remember that no master has fallen from heaven yet.

Using good words properly is a gift that can be developed. Life gains flavor, heat and quality. You live like in a better world.

4. Optimize decisions

Every decision has consequences. Thanks to our decision-making ability, we can also decide about our thoughts, feelings and words - as we want and are trained.

To what extent are we ready to take responsibility for our day-to-day decisions? The choice of work, spouse, vacation spot, friends are long-term decisions. Many circumstances such as culture, family, language and time of life are not our choice; they are decided by others (for us). This also requires a decision from us to deal with it as best as possible.

One of the most profound decisions is arguably life or death. We are confronted with it every day. With every meal we decide - whether consciously or unconsciously - for a long-term healthy life or not.

Our values ​​and experiences help in our decisions. A lot happens automatically. Some speak of gut instinct. Choosing a life partner based on gut instinct would not be enough for me. Feelings can be deceptive if they are not analyzed and made transparent.

To what extent does the interest in truth and honesty play a role in our decisions? The way the media is used, fashion trends, neighborhood envy, relationship difficulties, etc., all of them influence our decisions, sometimes violently.

With the decisions we have made, we have switched on or off our genes, which are responsible for our behavior and emotions. In this way, our free will decisions help our memory formation.

Questions to think about

Which attitudes and habits have significantly influenced my decisions so far?

Are there any values ​​and habits that need to be adjusted?

Can you explain the observations made to someone you trust?

Are there decision-making patterns that have always been positive? Why ? Negatives?

Better quality of life can be achieved through more conscious decision-making processes. How do you intend to use this in the future?

Anyone who rushes through life with a GPS or a map has a big advantage. But if he does not know the goal, he too is lost. Keeping the goal in mind helps to make the right decisions.

5. Recognize and forgive misconduct

What lives changes. Those who work a lot make more mistakes. Mistakes are part of our life. How do we deal with that ? How do we deal with mistakes made by other people? Can we forgive them Can you forgive yourself?

Forgiveness is a choice. With this, we can get rid of all the toxic thoughts of anger, resentment, shame, sadness, and bitterness. We can also part with guilt and hatred. Many people are misguided by these emotions. Too bad.

There are more than a hundred studies that demonstrate the healing power of forgiveness. If we do not forgive, the thoughts of the painful event will create fear in the amygdala brain region, leading to the release of stress hormones and increasing blood pressure. This condition can persist and lead to mental and physical illness.

Forgiveness instead of revenge pays off. With feelings of revenge you harm yourself the most.

Forgiveness begins with repentance. It also allows one to really love. Unconditional (see blog). We cannot change the past, but we can understand it better; knowing the truth from it will set us free. Free for good decisions. Free for forgiveness.

When we forgive, we are not apologizing for the behavior of the 'offender'. Instead of 'judging' this, which would amount to too great a responsibility, we hand it over to God's fate. HE is the judge and has relieved us of it.

Questions that aid the process of forgiveness

• Are there any injuries or suffering that have been inflicted on you that have not yet been processed?

• What's stopping you from starting the forgiveness process?

• What speaks in these cases PRO, what CONTRA forgiveness?

• What might the situation look like after forgiveness has happened?

• What steps can you take now to restore these relationships to health?

A real SORRY can bring hearts back together. It binds wounds and makes peeling paint seem unimportant. The main thing is that love is right.

. Here is the link:

Forgiveness-Seminar

PS. Reference book: "Who turned my brain off" by Dr. Caroline Leaf

Way of Toxic Thoughts

Everyday life often demands top performance. No time for mental processing. Many sacrifice their health for money in order to use the money for their health again later in retirement. Is there really something worth sacrificing your health for?

In case you haven't read the previous Toxi topics: TOX1  and   TOX2

Brief repetition of the STRESS blog

Toxic emotions quickly develop from toxic thoughts. Negative stress hormones injure our body and cause various diseases. Good news: We can defend ourselves against this. To do this, we need to understand the path of toxic thoughts.

The three Stress Levels

1. Temporary Stress

This means a temporary moment of stress, for example exam stress, which can increase the pulse or lead to clammy hands.

2. Dangerous Stress

If the stress doesn't stop soon, the risk of internal injuries increases. (e.g. relationship stress)

3. Chronic stress

This type of stress drains a lot of energy from the body and destroys it more and more the longer it lasts. (e.g. resentment)

Our increased stress level can paralyze us quite a bit - or make us hyperactive. How do you react in each case?

How do the last two stress levels affect your health?

This should be explained using the following three body systems:

A. The HEART

Interesting that our thoughts and feelings have a direct impact on our heart! Many heart conditions are a reminder:

• high blood pressure

• Angina pectoris (cramping of the heart tissue)

• Coronary heart disease (e.g. hardening of the arteries caused by anger)

• Strokes (the brain is no longer supplied with enough blood)

Our heart is more than just a pump. Science shows that the heart has its own nervous system with over 40,000 neurons.

New scientific findings about the neurological sensitivity of the heart point to communication paths between the brain and the heart, with which the integrity (integrity - "What I believe, I do too") of our thought life is checked.

The signals that our heart sends to the brain influence perception and emotional processing, as well as higher cognitive functions.

Our heart is extremely important for our life processes, physically and mentally. Physical fitness is extremely worthwhile. 5000+ steps per day should be the minimum average. Don't let that get you down. You do it for yourself and for your family.

B. THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

Resentment, bitterness, refusal to forgive and self-hatred (see Blog) are emotions that can significantly disrupt the immune system.

Our immune system has the 'military' task of protecting our body from suffering and disease.

If I am satisfied, it sends endorphins (happiness hormones) to the brain; this can also send back messenger substances (neuropeptides). There can be a lively exchange of information between the brain and the immune system!

If the immune system detects an enemy (e.g. toxic thought), it produces blood proteins (cytokines), which in turn can cause exhaustion and depression. This has an unfavorable effect on the whole body, since it hinders the natural healing and protective processes of the immune system.

It is very critical when an autoimmune reaction occurs, that is, when the immune system can no longer distinguish between healthy cells and pathogens due to these irritations. A sudden outbreak of stress via a weakened immune system can also lead to a cold. It can happen, for example, that usually one spouse falls ill 2-4 days later after a big argument or catches a cold. Stress uses up tons of vitamin C.

We can do a lot for a good immune system. Joie de vivre combined with a healthy diet allows us to really enjoy life. GOOD AND HEALTHY is a great combination!

THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

Its challenge is to get as many nutrients as possible from our food and drink into the body. It 'feeds' all body organs with nutrients through the blood.

You have probably already noticed how your meal plan can influence your own mood.

• Those who consume a lot of fats and oils have a 'heavy' stomach that darkens the good mood.

• Those who eat sweets are quickly rewarded with feelings of happiness, which subsided after 30 minutes. The subsequent 'hunger' for even more sweets carries the risk of being addictive. ATTENTION: Swiss chocolate is 'dangerous' !! :-)

We also know that even healthy food can be converted into substances harmful to the body in a toxic mood. So we shouldn't eat anything if we have negative emotions (frustration).

Examples of digestive disorders:

• constipation

• diarrhea

• Nausea and vomiting

• Stomach cramps

• Ulcers

• permeable and nervous intestine

Mister X is at the doctor's due to indigestion. The real cause is problems with the boss. Should Mister X take medicine, all those pills for the stabbing pain? What do you suggest ?

I hope these messages don't put you in a stressful state! There is a good side:

If we are aware of this problem, we can react to it!

We can decide to use this knowledge of the connections between thoughts, emotions and body for positive purposes.

The more we learn to rethink, monitor and regulate our thoughts and emotions, the more our body will reward us with health and a joyful quality of life.

Let's not let the joy of life be taken away. Challenges make us strong. Gratitude for small things nourishes our health. How we look at the circumstances has a big impact.

Next we will deal with the traps that we fall into all too easily in our everyday lives. Before doing this, however, we should point out the method by which we can avoid these pitfalls.

PS. Reference book: "Who turned my brain off" by Dr. Caroline Leaf