Happiness Redefined, with Sharon Salzberg | Big Think

I think one of our difficult conditionings actually is that, uh, we feel, first of all, or we're taught, first of all, that we will feel better about ourselves by demeaning others, by putting others down.

I think a lot of workplaces reflect that; a lot of homes reflect that. Um, you know, that we feel okay. The way I am going to trust myself and feel good about myself is if I can just kind of denounce this other, another person.

And we, I think we actually feel terrible, but we don't realize it because we're so caught in that paradigm of this is what we have to do. And so I would disrupt that, first of all, and really challenge that.

We also tend to think that compassion is a weakness and that if we care, we'll just burn out. And, uh, you know, compassion will inevitably lead to exhaustion and giving in, losing a sense of principle and discernment and really having boundaries.

And I think none of that is true either. We can redefine happiness, uh, so that it's not just pleasure and, uh, endless pleasure seeking and being superficial or being like happy-go-lucky, to having a deep, deep sense of resiliency and connection to a bigger picture.

And we would be a lot happier, and success, our sense of what success is, would follow that. When it comes to compassion, I think there always needs to be an examination of balance.

It's a balance, first of all, between compassion for ourselves and compassion for others. If we ignore ourselves, I mean, that's not going to work in the long run anyway. We're not going to be able to sustain some effort; we're just going to burn out.

And it's also a balance between compassion for someone and discernment. Maybe we really feel bad for someone and we need to be strong. We need to, uh, express disapproval. We really need to set a boundary that's very clear, not give them what they want, right?

And there's also a balance between having compassion for someone and realizing I can't fix it, right? I can't make your problem go away. I can be there, I could try to help, I could do this, I could do that, uh, but in the end, I can't control the unfolding of the universe, which I often add an addendum to that: like, too bad, right? It's kind of too bad, but it's true.

And so we need a balance in order to have resiliency, which is kind of the secret ingredient in compassion. Otherwise, compassion becomes burnout; it becomes exhaustion.