How Do I Balance Compassion and Zeal?

EPISODE 84 | HOW DO I BALANCE COMPASSION AND ZEAL?

The question to ask is, not just why is it I fail to be compassionate - if you also tend towards being more zealous - but what's behind the desire to bring someone else, or to bring your organization, to bring your family towards that ideal? Again, what's behind that desire that you have to bring that person - or that organization, your family, whoever it is - towards that ideal.

[00:00:32] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me. 

[00:01:08] Good morning. Today is day nine of the 30 days of IG Live on the interior journey, with a particular focus on integration as an aspect of the interior journey. So, I thought today I will also deal with another question that had been sent to me.

[00:01:30] You know, I love it when the questions that are sent come from, real life experiences. Because a lot of times, the topics that are important for the interior life, when we just look at the themes and the topics without looking at how they apply to real life, it can be a bit too abstract and conceptual.

[00:01:49] AM I COMPASSIONATE WITH MYSELF?
But when it comes out in the context of a real-life situation, I think it really allows us to engage at a deeper level. So, today I want to talk about how do I balance compassion and zeal? Okay, so, with regards to another person, but I want to say this also applies to our relationship with ourselves. Because when we are interested in making the interior journey, the way we treat ourselves as someone on this journey, says a lot about a relationship with ourselves.

[00:02:28] So, how compassionate can I be with myself? Or how zealous am I with myself? It's the same kind of dynamics that we will often see when we are working with someone else or when we're leading someone else. So, let me share with you the specific question that this was, that was sent to me.

[00:02:51] So, the question was; as leaders, be it at home, in a family context, I suppose, or at the workplace - I suppose also including maybe, ministries, communities, whatever capacity you may be exercising leadership in. So, as leaders, how do we balance Christian compassion and bringing the child or the family or the organization or the community, etc. to where we want it to be? 

[00:03:21] So, I would include also in our self-leadership, our self-leadership. How do we also balance compassion for ourselves and bringing ourselves to where we want to be? So, there's this tension that we experience, between wanting to be compassionate and that desire to bring ourselves or someone else or an organization towards its ideal.

[00:03:44] So, I'm going to answer this question from the perspective of integration, alright? Because I think we can again, get stuck in just talking about this very conceptually.

[00:03:55] REVISTING THE THREE LAYERS
In day three, I talked about returning home to ourself. Okay, and I spoke about that there are three layers to life. So, there's the outer layer, that is outside of me. That's where the circumstances and the environment and the people that I'm in relationship kind of like that's where the outer layer, right? And then there's the inside layer of my own emotions, my thoughts, my physical sensations. And then there's the core of me, right? My inner self. It's kind of like the base and the foundation from which I'm meant to act. 

[00:04:27] But the problem is when our inner self, when our core is not yet integrated, when we have been wounded and the core hasn't been healed, we are often very reactive, which means that a lot of times we are just bouncing to and fro in the outside layer, in the outer layer, and not even really being aware of what's happening in our inner layer, like, how I'm actually feeling.

[00:04:51] So, this question on how can I balance compassion and zeal, in my experience, both in my own journey and in other people who struggle with this tension, we often just try and deal with this question at the outermost layer.

[00:05:07] Meaning we are just concerned about the impact of, let's say, our lack of compassion has on someone else. Or the impact that our inability to lead someone towards the ideal or our lack of zeal; how that would impact the organization or the person.

[00:05:25] So, let's say, you're a leader. It's interesting that this question comes in the context of leadership. Because in the course that I teach specifically about the interior life of a leader, we deal with these three layers and we deal with exactly the challenges that we have.

[00:05:39] And one that often comes up in the context of Christian leadership is how do I balance being patient and compassionate with people and demanding certain standards of them. Okay, or bringing them towards a certain kind of ideal passionately. So, I want to bring our attention now in answering this question down from the outer layer, where we're just concerned about what the result is, how it impacts other people, to what's actually going on in our inner layer, and actually even more significantly in our core - okay, in our core.

[00:06:17] So, first I want to acknowledge that depending on our temperament personality and also sometimes depending on the nature of our wounds, we tend to lean towards either end of the spectrum; some of us will tend to lean towards compassion. And maybe we want to have so much compassion and patience with others that we really don't want to push anyone towards the ideal.

[00:06:42] BEING OVERZEALOUS
And some of us may lean towards that zeal, that pushing people towards the ideal, and then we really struggle with compassion, right? So, we may tend to lean more towards one side or the other in this tension. But here's the question to consider. What's behind that energy. Okay, so, let's start with the zeal first.

[00:07:04] Okay, because I know that very well my temperament and my experience leans towards being passionate and zealous and wanting to bring people towards a certain ideal towards perfection, whether it's in the context of discipling someone else or mentoring someone else or helping to develop someone towards the fullness of their potential.

[00:07:25] I tend to be impatient and, really want to help them towards the ideal. And I find myself, in the past especially, so often when I go to confession, it is about not being compassionate enough, about hurting people because maybe I'm pushing them too hard, or I'm judging them too harshly, etc.

[00:07:44] So, the question to ask is, not just why is it I fail to be compassionate - if you also tend towards being more zealous - but what's behind the desire to bring someone else, or to bring your organization, to bring your family towards that ideal? Again, what's behind that desire that you have to bring that person - or that organization, your family, whoever it is - towards that ideal.

[00:08:16] And don't stop at the first, most apparent answer. In the context of faith, and of a Christian faith, I think many of us go, "well, that's what we're supposed to do", right? That's what Christ asked us to do, let's say, to make disciples. And you know, we're called to be perfect. And so, that's why I'm doing it.

[00:08:33] UNABLE TO ACCEPT REALITY
That's not going deep enough, okay? Oftentimes, this surface layer kind of explanation covers, masks our real reason the energy inside us that's making us want to do this, all right? So, look beneath the apparent answer to where the energy lies. Let me give you an example. So, usually, someone who is more prone towards pushing someone else towards the ideal demanding standards, exacting standards, we often experience great discomfort at accepting reality as it is.

[00:09:14] You know, there's a sense of no, no, I do not accept the current situation. This is not ideal. This is wrong, right? This is harmful. However, we may phrase it, you know, it's harmful to you, to the person, to the organization. So, we need to move from where we are.

[00:09:28] That's not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. But if we ask ourselves what lies at our discomfort, what's the cause for that inability to accept the current reality. Now, but I'm not saying, oh, therefore, I don't need to do anything about it. You know, we don't need to make any changes.

[00:09:48] I mean, like, a contemplative gaze at beholding the reality with love. Because the first step that we need to make usually to make real effective spiritual transformation possible is to accept the current reality with love, to be able to look at it with love, right? And for those of us, actually I would say, no matter which side of this dynamics you tend to be prone towards, whether it's too much compassion or lack of compassion, there's usually an inability to just accept the reality, to just see what reality is and to say this is the reality and there's a reason why this is the case.

[00:10:34] When I was much younger, I mean, more than 10 years ago, there was a situation where I remembered being in spiritual direction and really confessing - not confessing, but sharing how much I struggled with a situation that, I had faced at work, which at the time was in a parish. And, you know, just how much I struggled because in that particular situation, someone was getting hurt, someone was getting betrayed.

[00:10:59] And the person in that situation, that I felt was a spiritual leader and should have taken responsibility and exercised leadership, failed to do so, from my perspective - failed to provide leadership and in fact, made the situation worse.

[00:11:15] And I was just so angry and so mad at it. And I found myself judging everyone and judging that leader in that context specifically. And my spiritual director asked me a question. He said what if that situation that you described, the way things unfolded, was already everyone in that scenario doing the best they could? What if that was the best that they could all do?

[00:11:43] And I remember my immediate reaction was, well that's - I do not accept that. I don't accept that as an option. I do not accept that everyone doing their best can result in such unsatisfying, unideal you know - just, really bad result kind of a situation, right?

[00:12:03] So, my response was very telling. I said, I do not accept that. I can't accept that. I can't accept that reality that even someone that I thought should be better as a leader, as a spiritual leader, that maybe the best that he could do, was what he could do. All right, which I thought was just really falling short.

[00:12:30] Now, that was a long time ago. What I took a long time, also, to realize was, that my inability to be able to accept reality when it's broken comes from, I guess, my script and my own lived experience, which was that, in order for me to be safe, in order for me to feel like I can win approval, that I can be accepted, I needed to be that reformer, that person who made sure that things always fell into place. That perfection was arrived at, or as much as possible.

[00:13:12] I had to be the person to make sure that everything was good and perfect. And so, I constantly drove my own self to standards of excellence that sometimes were unsustainable. I was very hard on myself. And the reason was the same thing. The reason was because for me, I cannot accept less than excellence, okay, or less than perfect. There was something that made me unable to receive that possibility. So, it was my wound, in a way, right? It was my wound that made me unable to be compassionate. Okay, it was a compulsion, in fact, that drove me, that blinds me to the factors that really could handicap the organization or the people in question.

[00:14:03] Give you another example. There was once when my husband spoke to me regarding one of the young persons that I was mentoring. And I've always been an impatient person. And again, it's the same dynamic was in play. I felt like I could see the incredible potential that this person had. And I was very frustrated that he wasn't moving or growing at a faster pace than I thought he should be or that he could be. I just felt like he was not - like lukewarm and maybe not cooperative enough.

[00:14:41] And those ones I expressed that frustration to my husband. And my husband asked me, "can you not have compassion on him? Can you not have pity on this person? Can you not see how he is just at this point in time, incapable of performing at the level of do or doing what it is that you want him to be able to do?" 

[00:15:07] So, my husband was, he was telling me, that this person in question, although I saw the potential - and I think in many ways, I wasn't wrong about the potential - but something in me prevented me from being able to see the reality at that point in time, that there were things preventing or making it impossible for this person to go beyond where he's at.

[00:15:33] And there's something in me that made it impossible for me to accept that, and therefore to accept this person where he is, as he is, and to love him unconditionally. Now, I loved him. I cared for him. But because in me, there was this energy - this energy that I'm sure he felt, that people around me felt that kept pushing him towards the ideal that did not allow him to just be where he was and who he was, even if he couldn't articulate it. Or even if he wasn't kind of like consciously aware of it, I'm sure some part of him felt not fully accepted by me unless he met my expectation, right?

[00:16:16] So, that was very much my younger self. It's still a shadow that I fight or that I have to accept when you don't want to see it. Okay, but for me, my tendency towards zeal at the cost of compassion, it was because within me there was a compulsion to reach the ideal myself, right?

[00:16:36] BEING OVERLY COMPASSIONATE
Okay, so, if you are someone that comes from the other side of the equation. If you are someone who leans towards compassion so much that you don't challenge someone when they need it, then when you don't speak truth, hard truths, when maybe it needs to be spoken, when you are so allowing and so accepting, in a sense, that there are no boundaries to your allowingness.

[00:17:03] Okay, so, it's a bit tricky. Depending on what our tendency is, right? So, if you're someone that leans so much towards so called compassion, that even when it is time to nudge someone, even when it's time to try and push, let's say, someone, and it's going to be uncomfortable, you don't do it. You can ask the same question that I asked earlier, right?

[00:17:26] Which is, what's behind your desire to be compassionate? What's behind your desire to let people feel received and loved. You may think, for example, that this is what it means to love. And I will tell you very honestly as someone who leans on the side of zeal, I've always believed that that's what love was. That's the way I experienced love too.

[00:17:46] Okay, being pushed to perform was told to me that that was what real love was and that mollycoddling people, being too allowing, being too permissive to people - that's not love. So, that's where I came from. That's how I grew up, right? If I love you, I will challenge you, I will teach you, I will push you towards the ideal.

[00:18:07] So, when I lean towards zeal so much so, that I cannot accept the reality in someone, the reality that maybe currently this is the limit that they have, this is the best that they can do. The part of me that rejects that comes from the wound of only knowing love as pushing someone towards the ideal, of myself being pushed towards the ideal.

[00:18:30] Okay, now, for someone who leans towards compassion so much that they cannot challenge someone when it's needed, they also will see that as love, right? Actually, love has both. And love needs to know. Like genuine love would have the wisdom to know when the season is, or when is the time to allow and to just sit with and to be compassionate and not push, and when is the time to speak the hard truth. 

[00:18:59] But at the same time, without pushing someone to act on that truth before they're ready, right? Okay, so, if you're someone that leans so much towards compassion that you can't take action as a leader, that's actually very destructive for the organization or the people that you're leading.

[00:19:18] Okay, if you're a parent, that's destructive for the family and for the other children when you're not able to draw boundaries that need to be drawn. If you're a leader of an organization or a community or any group and you're so understanding and compassionate that you don't, let's say, remove, sometimes people that need to be removed. Or take steps to maybe discipline, make people take ownership when they need to. That's also going to cost the people, the rest of the people that you lead, right?

[00:19:51] WHERE ARE THE ENERGIES WITHIN YOU COMING FROM?
  So, you have to ask yourself, where is that energy coming from inside you? Remember the three layers, right? Where is that energy coming from inside you that prevents you from doing the hard thing? In this sense, like, let's say speaking hard truths or challenging a person that needs to be challenged when they need it.
 
[00:20:10] What might be the wounds hidden beneath you? What might be some unmet need in yourself? Unmet need in yourself that makes you particularly or excessively permissive, maybe compassionate with someone else, right? You might be overcompensating. I think no matter which side of this equation we go in extreme of, we're usually overcompensating for something, okay?

[00:20:36] And when that happens, you will notice that the energy is one of compulsion and remember when there is compulsion, when there's compulsion, it means that we're not acting from a place of freedom. All right, so, what's that golden mean that we need to exercise in this and how can we exercise that? So, the question was how can I balance compassion and bringing the organization or the child or the person to the ideal, right?

[00:21:05] First, I want to say it starts from our own integration of our core identity. Why is that? When I'm a leader in any capacity, if my sense of worth, my sense of value is contingent on my success in creating a certain kind of outcome - which means that I will feel threatened if a certain outcome does not happen. Because I may be thinking, oh, people are going to judge me now because I can't make something happen.

[00:21:36] Or people are going to judge me now because they're going to think that I'm not compassionate enough, right? Or they're going to judge me because I couldn't produce the results that was expected of me, for example. If I'm operating from that place of fear - so, if you recall, yesterday's video was precisely about how fear prevents us from acting freely, right?

[00:21:57] So, it's the same thing here. When my sense of identity and worth rests on some outcome or how people see me, then I wouldn't be able to hit this golden mean of being compassionate, and at the same time bringing someone else towards the ideal. Okay, because I would just be reactive. The way I make decisions and act will be very driven by my compulsions.

[00:22:24] I may unknowingly be in a fight or flight kind of mode, right? I'm just trying to please someone else or to avoid being judged by someone else. If I become more integrated though, if my sense of self, now, is rooted in who I am, if I am confident and secure that I am deeply and unconditionally loved by God and, let's say, by myself, then I have space inside me to make deliberations as to whether at this moment in time I'm called to just continue to allow and let someone just be where they are at, or whether at this moment , I need to challenge them or to speak some truth to them.

[00:23:08] But at the same time, even when I do challenge them and I speak truth to them, I am very aware that I can't force their hand, I can't make them change. And depending on whether they change or not and the demands or the requirements of the role that I'm playing, okay, as a leader, whether as a parent or a leader in an organization. If I am securely rooted and grounded in my identity, I would not be afraid to make any necessary decisions that requires me to take steps - for example, let's say at work; letting someone go or giving someone a lacklustre performance review, right?

[00:23:52] So, if I'm somebody that's very afraid of offending people or really feel that I need to always be compassionate to someone, I might struggle to do these kind of steps, right? Because we'll feel that we may think that it's being uncompassionate. Whereas if I'm someone who is so, zealous, right, that I have unreasonable demands on the people that I'm leading.

[00:24:16] As I grow in integration, I can actually begin to see how much people are struggling in ways that I probably couldn't see before. Usually, this happens when I also become more able to see how I struggle. So, as I grow in compassion for myself, I will often find that now I have it in me, quite naturally, to be compassionate to others.

[00:24:41] BALANCING ZEAL AND COMPASSION
Okay, so, a big part of this leaning or balancing compassion and zeal has to do with my ability to accept my limitation, which means even in this bringing someone or the organization that I lead towards a certain ideal, if I can accept that there are many things outside my control, that I am not God, and I can't change hearts, and I can't force people; that I, that in a sense, free will is given to all and that there is beauty in letting things unfold, even if it's messy, even if it means that there are consequences and things that develop that may be uncomfortable for me to accept, right.

[00:25:31] If I am able to accept my limitation, that I'm finite, that I'm actually not in control, then I will find that I can relax into being present. I will find it easier to exercise both compassion and zeal, knowing when to give room and when to tighten the leash. And more importantly, I will be at peace knowing that who I am remains unchanged. Like, my worth remains unchanged. My belovedness remains unchanged. I think for any leader, that really is at the heart of this problem or this challenge.

[00:26:16] If your sense of worth and value of belovedness is contingent on some outcome that you feel that you need to bring about, whether it is making someone a disciple or leading an organization or parenting. If you at some level, subconscious level, think that you need to prove yourself in order to have worth, then you are going to continue to struggle with balancing compassion and zeal.

[00:26:47] But the more secure and rooted and grounded you are in the core, then you're going to surprise yourself at how much you can grow in compassion, as well as in exercising leadership decisions that may be difficult to do.

[00:27:04] So, I hope that today's sharing also has given you something to think about if you have experienced this tension of balancing between compassion and zeal.

[00:27:16] And if you have any questions that come from today's sharing, please feel free to drop me a note. You can send me a direct message, and I'll be happy to maybe address your question in a future Live.

[00:27:29] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive. 

[00:27:56] If you like what you hear on this podcast and would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me, as well as be updated on my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter, Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. Until the next episode, happy becoming!