Do you hurt when others hurt? Do you feel sympathy and concern for the misfortunes and suffering of others? Are you compelled to use your gifts to help lift others up and clear a path for healing and opportunity? You are compassionate.

Your ability to show compassion for other beings allows you to care for others and to be cared for when your turn comes around. But, compassion is not drawn from an endless well. It is possible to give so much that your well runs dry and you experience at best, compassion fatigue, and at worst the loss of your own well-being and potentially our life.

Rest and rejuvenation can prop you back up, but if you do not turn your compassion toward yourself, you are likely to be drawn into the same cycle of giving to exhaustion. Filling yourself first and giving of the excess is often the opposite of what we are taught, to give first and subsist on what is left. Cultivating and practicing unconditional compassion for yourself, can disrupt this pattern and ultimately protect your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health by shoring you up first.

You can then give freely and joyously of what remains.