Something we talk a lot about in NLP and hypnosis circles is the power that words have to rob an experience of its juice - when you put a label on something you often strangle the life out of it and reduce it to just a concept. On the flip side of this coin is the fact that sometimes putting words to a feeling you had but hadn’t named can solidify it in your mind and help you to think more clearly about it and make new more resourceful choices in how you respond.
One of my favourite words at the moment is compersion. It was coined in the polyamorous community to express the feelings of vicarious pleasure and empathy felt when one of your partners is having great experiences in another relationship. To define it by contrast, it is the opposite of jealousy. The feeling of compersion is also sometimes informally referred to by the adjective frubbly and the noun frubbles.
I got to thinking how these words could apply outside the context of polyamorous relationships. Although I haven’t been practicing much recently due to other commitments I often get compersive feelings through my therapy practice, through introducing other people to self improvement and in many other contexts, but the real reason that the term was coined was to have a word for the opposite of jealousy, so it is best applied in situations where it would be possible to feel jealousy but instead you choose to feel good about someone elses success.
We have a strong anti-success culture in the UK. A lot of people hate to see anyone doing better than them, and have a jealous reaction. One the one hand this originates in a delicate sensibility in matters of good taste - conspicuous bragging, brashness and complacence are negative traits the English have a higher than average sensitivity and aversion to, and with good reason, but this often gets twisted into a generalised dislike of any kind of conspicuous success which manifests as jealousy. This is amplified by our media who love to scandalise and slander those who have risen to positions of obvious success.
Feelings of jealousy originate in the fear and insecurity that come from the illusion of separateness. When you are conscious of the connectedness of all-that-is it’s impossible to feel anything but good about the success of another - it is your success too.
Instead of feeling jealousy when I see someone doing better than me in any particular area I feel compersion. This positivity creates a kind of feedback loop - the more you feel it the more success you enjoy yourself and the freer you feel to feel yet more compersion. It’s an instance of the law of attraction where feeling the positive feelings of success you would feel if you had yourself achieved what you are observing draws the same success to you.
It’s a good practice to notice times when you feel jealousy at someone elses success in any area where you feel they are doing better than you. Perhaps they are making more money, have a better social life, are in better physical shape or seem happier and more fulfilled. As soon as you notice this stop and make a conscious decision to feel frubbly instead, I’m sure it’ll be a very rewarding habit for you just like it has been for me.
RSS
{ 1 } Comments
I wrote out this really nice post, went on about being a healthy meat eater, racism is just a word, the “50’s cocktail party era”, and the “flyover states”, and was rudely interupted by a blue screen. That’ll teach me to post directly in to a blog.
I’ll go on again later… if I have more time, so to speak, heh.
Just going to say that it will be interesting, two NeLPers doing crazy psychedelic sleep schedules. You tipped me off in an earlier diary mentioning Milton Erickson. No one reads about Milton Erickson without a good reason. I am not formally trained, but I have had a few personal trainers, and I have been reading NLP literature for literally 2 decades now. How cool that you are a Ericksonian therapist!!
I won’t even begin to list the language patterns I see in your writing. It’s not any of my business afterall :).
Post a Comment