Success & Wellness: the Need for Compassion

Success can be elusive. One of the ways to make it more certain is to forgive yourself and others for past mistakes.

How life pulled the rug from under me

My life was seemingly set on a tangent of success. I had lots of friends, a girlfriend, and a career that looked as if it was going to catapult me to be a top lawyer before I could shout “Jack Robinson.”

But then disaster struck. My behaviour and performance suddenly became more erratic and soon I was diagnosed with late-onset bipolar disorder.

My condition deteriorated rapidly, and within a few years I was placed on long-term sick leave.

Where once there was success, seemingly only adversity loomed. The promise of failure hung about me like a stench, and I was reminded of a remark made by a friend of mine when I was at university that “You can smell the success off him.”

Oh, how the tables had turned, and oh how it seemed that God was laughing at me.

Beginning to turn the tables to achieve success & wellness

After a few years of profound illness and self-pity, I began to wonder how I could turn the tables.

I began to visualize how I could be successful in the future with the munitions I had to hand. I conducted an inventory of my victuals and munitions and soon realized that I could improve my lot by writing. It would be good for my mind and would stop it from turning to mush. You can read my perceptions about that here.

But before I could move forward, I would have to identify the wounds that had been inflicted on me during my illness, and the wounds I had inflicted on myself over the course of my life. This was essential because my mind was burdened with guilt and regret, and, like an overloaded pantechnicon, there was a substantial risk that I might veer off the road.

So, I embarked on a campaign of compassion: compassion not only towards others who had wronged me (in my estimation) but also towards myself for not forgiving sooner and dwelling in the past too much. For I had squandered the gift of time in my cogitations, and that was almost unforgivable.

How forgiveness can lead to success & wellness

I set about forgiving myself, and to my surprise, I discovered it is much harder to forgive yourself than others.

It took years, more than a decade in fact.

I sought out old friends and sought their forgiveness (with varying degrees of success). I tried to make it up to my family by attempting to become more industrious, and by forgiving them for the occasional wounding comment they had made about their perception of my sloth when I was on long-term sick leave.

Yes, compassion is crucial, but it is not necessarily altruistic. In fact, on a level, it is quite selfish. At the end of the day, I wanted to grab life by the scruff of the neck and become a success, but my guilt and resentments were blocking the road.

Lost friendships and self-diagnosis

The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of compassion includes the concept of “pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.” But, as I have speculated, there is a case for self-compassion, and forgiving yourself for your own sufferings and misfortunes, especially when they are self-inflicted.

There were plenty of friends whom I had rejected because they had failed to live up to my expectations of what their friendships might entail. I suddenly realised that, whatever their shortcomings, I had failed in my quest to be friends with them by summarily rejecting them without seeking an explanation.

Another area where I had to forgive myself and exercise self-compassion was that of self-diagnosis. Even though, on a level, they say that someone with depression or mania is probably the last person to know about it, being truthful I had known that my mind wasn’t right for some time, and I should have sought out help. If I had done that, perhaps the worst excess of my illness and my going on long-term sick leave might have been avoided.

Alas, I shall never know.

Compassion is a key to success & wellness

So exercise compassion on yourself and others, and you might not veer off the road, and success and wellness will be less elusive.

In the next few articles, The Successity Blog by Robert Porter is going to explore some of the other elements and facets that are desirable for achieving wellness and success. They will be lessons I have learned myself the hard way.

In an exercise of compassion, I hope that the lessons and their results come easier to you.