10 Ways To Open Yourself To Love And Be More Compassionate

If you want to feel a more fulfilling sense of love and compassion for yourself and others, you are at the right place. To love deeply and be more compassionate toward others, you must first learn to love yourself. Wanting and needing to open up and love someone profoundly is an innate human desire. 

We crave to be loved and to love somebody with all our hearts. Yet, we live in such a stressful world that it’s getting difficult to feel compassion and love so deeply. The more stressed and disappointed you feel, the more you push people away. It’s a natural reaction to what’s happening around us. You can love and be compassionate even with all that stress and disappointments. Imagine how it will feel to have an immense amount of love and compassion without any heaviness.

You can also try this 10-minute meditation for universal connection.

How To Cultivate Compassion And Love Deeply

You will have to make two shifts for this to be possible. One, cultivating compassion, and two, becoming fearlessly vulnerable. In this article, you will learn ten ways that help you allow that shift to happen. So get ready to be open to loving deeply and be more compassionate towards others and yourself.

Be kind to yourself.

As you can see, being kind to yourself is not difficult at all. You need to believe in yourself and feel that kindness will come easy for you.

This is a great way to start cultivating compassion for others. Because it helps us see ourselves through their eyes. If we’re constantly criticizing ourselves or beating ourselves up for our mistakes, then how can we ever expect anyone else not to do the same?

Being kind doesn’t mean being soft-hearted or passive-aggressive. Rather, it means understanding who we are with flaws and strengths too!

It means being kind to ourselves and others and knowing when to put your foot down and say no. Kindness is not a weakness; rather, it’s a strength. It takes a lot of courage to be kind because there will always be people who don’t want us to grow. Because our lower boundaries benefit them. Those types of people will try to push you more toward self-criticism, but remember, you can control how you treat yourself. That kindness can also be reflected through taking care of yourself and eating mindfully.

Be gentle with yourself.

If you want to be gentle with others, you must also learn to be gentle with yourself. Being gentle with yourself will manifest as not being harsh on yourself when you don’t achieve something. Not punishing yourself for being human and having flaws of human. Allowing yourself to be and experience everything with the flow.

This also includes being gentle with your mental and physical health. Focusing on improving self-talk is also going to be part of being gentle. Try to create a safe comfortable environment that also allows you to grow. Being gentle doesn’t mean that you will have to sacrifice your growth potential. You can still achieve and grow when being gentle with yourself.

Accept all of you.

Being gentle and kind to yourself is not enough because love starts with acceptance. The deep self-love you always crave to feel will also start with acceptance. Accepting all of you is going to mean accepting all your feelings and emotions. Even the sad and hard ones, all the emotions that scare you.

Here we are talking about feelings and emotions so let us just quickly explain the difference between the two. Feelings are what we experience when our body reacts to something, such as pain, hunger, and tiredness. While emotions can be felt consciously or subconsciously, and that’s why they are a little difficult to understand.

Now let’s get back to the acceptance part. Accepting all of you will also mean accepting that you can make mistakes. Accepting your body and how it looks and feels to you. Accepting all the strengths along with all the weaknesses. Understanding that you don’t need a label to accept yourself is also part of it all.

So let’s start with accepting all of you.

You have flaws, strengths, and emotions. You have a body that is imperfect and in need of care. There is a timeline for your life, but it doesn’t have to be what everyone expects it to be. Your fears are real, but they don’t have to rule your day-to-day life or ruin opportunities for growth and happiness. And finally: accept yourself unconditionally!

It’s hard to be your own best friend sometimes. You care what people think, and that can be a real problem. But the truth is that you are a fantastic person and deserve all the love in the world. But, remember, it has to start with self-acceptance if you want it all to last. You can easily cultivate self-acceptance through many different forms of meditation.

Practice self-understanding and forgiveness.

Do you think you’ll be able to understand and forgive others if you can’t do that for yourself? Understanding and forgiveness for self are going to help you build understanding in relationships and forgive people when they disappoint you.

It is a lot easier to develop self-understanding and self-forgiveness than you might assume. You can start by understanding your needs and taking care of them but at the same time, forgiving when you cannot fulfill them.

For example, you decided to workout every day and eat well, but you missed your workout and ate junk for days. Now you feel like what’s the point of continuing when I am going to fail anyway. When you are forgiving yourself, then go back to your workout schedule and healthy diet.

Related: These 7 Ways Combining Exercise And Meditation Can Change You For Good

Stop expecting perfection from yourself and others.

Expecting perfection from yourself and perfection from others means setting high expectations. Getting caught up in the race of perfectionism can result in extreme depression and anxiety.

Medical news today says that depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation are linked especially with socially prescribed perfectionism.

It is another story when someone expects others to be perfect and do everything perfectly. But, when you are trying to love and be loved, it is crucial that you learn to leave perfectionism behind. It is hard to admit, but many of us are guilty of expecting people around us and ourselves to be perfect.

And it takes a great toll on our relationship with ourselves as well as others. Perfectionism and expectations are the most challenging part to let go of for some people. However, it is extremely rewarding to let it go.

Celebrate your good points.

Recognize your strengths and talents and give all the credit you deserve.

Recognizing and accepting your flaws is never enough if you are not celebrating your success and strength. It is necessary to recognize your strengths and all your good points. Celebrate your every improvement and growth along the way.

If you continue to focus on improving and improving without realizing how far you have come, it is inevitable that you will lose motivation. And if we take into account the law of attraction, the more you will recognize and celebrate your strength and the good in you, the more you will have to honor.

Related: 4 Best Birthday Meditations To Reflect and Celebrate

Develop your sense of humor, and don’t take life too seriously.

Our first step in developing compassion and love should be to stop taking ourselves and other people too seriously.

Please don’t take your problems as seriously as they seem to you at the moment. If you’re having a bad day, don’t let it ruin every other day of your life! You are allowed to have a bad day. Everyone does! The trick is not letting them define who you are or what kind of person you’ll become if they continue happening too often.

Looking at problems and slight discomforts of life from a fun perspective is one of the best ways to develop a deeper love for life and people.

Some people laugh when they fall after slipping on a slippery floor, and others will complain and get agitated when the same thing happens to them. Imagine what must be going on in the mind of these two types of people. It is obviously not a pleasant experience, but one found humor in their carelessness, and the other got irritated.

Realize your freedom to choose how you approach life, people, and challenges.

We don’t think enough about the freedom of choice we have. We can choose how we see things, situations, people, and the world. Looking at life and the people around you with a negative film over your eyes will be difficult to feel compassion for them. 

Your perspective and how you look at things will decide how you approach them. How you approach life, people and challenges is the key to opening yourself up to love deeply. 

Realizing this can be difficult for many because we are conditioned to approach everything a certain way. Such as the things you are told ” you are not good enough,” “you can’t change anything,” “the world is like that,” and “life is supposed to be difficult.” When we believe these things about ourselves, we feel isolated and alone. Because of that, we also neglect and miss out on many growth opportunities. 

It can take a bit of work, but this is something that has the power to change a lot of things for you. In addition to the ability to deeply love and receive love.

Related: How To Do A Cord Cutting Meditation To Preserve Your Energy & Cut Spiritual Ties

Understand what is going on with someone before you judge them negatively.

As human beings, everyone is capable of profound compassion and understanding. But, to have that kind of compassion requires you to have the ability to look past their behavior. Most of us don’t even know the other person’s story before judging them. We can only look at their words and behavior and how those words and behavior are affecting us. 

Compassion will come naturally to you if you can see past the words that caused you to hurt. We get caught up with all the minute details of what and how someone said something that we forget the why. Compassion comes from being able to look past the what and how of someone’s words and behavior. 

Analyzing and judging what others mean by what they did only causes pain for both parties. However, this sounds easier said than done. Because most of us don’t know each other enough to understand the reasons behind the actions. 

We can still find comfort in knowing and understanding that everyone has their struggles and problems. The things they say or do are not related to you; if they were, you’d have known. By developing this understanding, you will not only save yourself from the pain but also the other person.

By being more compassionate toward yourself, you can cultivate more compassion toward others.

Being more compassionate toward yourself will help you open up to love.

Compassion is the foundation of love. It’s when we show kindness and respect for ourselves. Only then can we do it for others and the world around us. When we don’t feel good enough or worthy enough, it prevents us from connecting with others.

Empathy is also going to be your best friend in this journey. Empathy isn’t just about being able to understand what another person feels. It’s also about being able to experience those feelings yourself. Empathy allows us access to someone else’s mind through their eyes to see things from their perspective. Even if they’re different from ours! The ability of compassion doesn’t come naturally for everyone. But with practice, anyone can become capable of love and compassion.

Conclusion

We spend so much time expecting love and connection from others, while all of it needs to start with us. Spend time looking after yourself without any judgment; it will make it easier to do the same for others. It might sound cliche, but an empty pot can’t fill others. You will have to fill yourself with compassion and love first. Only then you can truly be open to giving and receiving love. 

Compassion and selfless love are the foundation for the whole experience of life. The kind of empathy we are going to develop through these tiny actions is immensely impactful. If you ever find yourself stressed during this process, then Enhanced app meditations are there for you.