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Raising Personal Standards Through Compassion

A Path to Growth and Fulfilment

Allan Johnson, PhD
15 min readSep 22, 2024
Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

In today’s fast-paced world, where achievement often trumps empathy, the concept of compassion holds a remarkable yet frequently overlooked potential for personal and societal change. When we embrace compassion, we open ourselves up to a wealth of opportunities for growth and positive transformation. But compassion is more than a momentary feeling or a reactive response; it is a deliberate personal standard, a guiding principle that shapes our behaviour, decisions, and interactions with others. Setting high personal standards, including the practice of compassion, requires a continuous commitment to self-reflection and a willingness to hold ourselves accountable to the expectations we set. As we delve deeper into the essence of compassion and personal standards, we can uncover how these two concepts are intrinsically linked, offering a pathway to a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

Understanding Compassion as a Personal Standard

At its core, compassion is the ability to recognise the existence of suffering in ourselves and others without necessarily taking on that suffering. It is about connection and empathy, not self-sacrifice. Many people mistakenly believe that compassion requires us to empathise with the feelings of others…

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Allan Johnson, PhD
Allan Johnson, PhD

Written by Allan Johnson, PhD

Integrative Coach | Mindfulness Teacher | Academic | Books with Palgrave and Bloomsbury

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