Participants described many activities and life choices that they felt boosted their capacity for compassion. These varied from person to person but revolved around caring for themselves physically, emotionally and spiritually, spending time with friends and family and broadening their horizons. A participant summarized: “I think it’s important to understand your own physical and mental health and well being. Take time for yourself. Try [to] take enough holiday time to recuperate, regenerate.”
Participants emphasized the importance of keeping physically healthy to maintain their capacity for compassion. They highlighted the importance of rest, healthy diet and physical activity. The following participant described how exercise not only kept him healthy but relieved stress, making more room for compassion: “Exercise is another stress reliever I think I use. To go out running or something where there’s intensity to work off some of that stress, I find [it] works.”
To promote mental health, participants advised spending time with family or friends and nurturing the other roles and relationships they had in their lives. This participant
described this way of bolstering his capacity for compassion: “Just having a nice healthy interaction, personal interaction with and knowing my kids and their friends or just absorbing other people’s experience at home or somewhere else; it always helps.” Participants pointed out how critical their close adult relationships were in maintaining their capacity for compassion. “I have a great relationship with my husband and I think being really grounded and in a strong relationship has made it much easier for me to go into the world and help other people.”
Participants also mentioned the importance of self awareness in knowing what
“recharges the batteries”. While some participants described spending time with others
to unwind, others preferred to be alone. “I’m an introvert in the true sense of someone
who recharges alone. I enjoy being with people but it takes energy from me, I’m not somebody who gets energy from being with people so I need my alone space.”
87
Participants commented on how their religious and spiritual practices allowed them to reflect. They believed this impacted the compassion they were able to bring to their patients. This participant described how religious holidays are a time for reflection about compassion: “Within the Jewish calendar…[there are] time[s] of year when I’m thinking
more about things like compassion and that idea of justice and reciprocity.” Participants described how having a time and format to reflect on compassion brought it into their awareness resulting in an effort to be more compassionate. “The more spiritual I happen to befeeling, the more compassion is there.”
Participants remarked that many religions had official times and places for reflection but those without religious affiliations found other ways to reflect on compassion in a spiritual way. A participant explained:
That’s the way I think of churches - an hour of time out of your busy week life, to have time to reflect on how to be a better person. That’s all it is – whether you’re Protestant or Catholic, Buddhist, whatever – as long as you take time out of your busy life to think about what else is out there in life and how to be a better person and how to interact with people....I now use running to think about all that stuff…to reflect and think about life.
Several participants commented that they found this time for reflection an important source of strength, a way to recharge their compassion. A participant explained how important it was for her to find the right context in which to do this:
Making it clear to myself that I don’t believe in God has been very grounding for me. I get my strength from people around me, the world around me – very much the natural world. It’s always been that way and now I make sure I seek out those things.
Many participants believed that in addition to time for reflection physicians needed time away from work with friends or family to reset their balance. For example, a participant said: “Some people don’t like to travel but I think by travelling you get away from all the distractions and from your pager...and you have good quality time with your kids or family.” Other participants pointed out that holiday travel opened their minds to new
things and altered their perspectives. “Travelling is always good - going somewhere or other cultures or those experiences.” Participants believed that broadening their horizons
88
increased their capacity for compassion by deepening their understanding of humanity and the world in which we live.
Observing things in the world, the news, the ability of other people to be compassionate, people that have been horribly treated but [are] still able to forgive and be understanding.... the circular nature of the world and the universe and people, families. There seems to be something about that that influences me. I think observing other people who are creating some other artistic things
influence me, things that I see, music, observing nature.
Music and art were mentioned by several participants as inspirational and compassion building. Many participants mentioned reading as another way of opening their minds and increasing compassion. “I read a lot - that helps to build compassion just because it puts you into all these different life circumstances and makes you see the world through other people’s eyes.”
Participants emphasized repeatedly, the importance of establishing work-life balance to be able to take time to regenerate and build their capacity for compassion.
...knowing your own limits and what makes you happy. And we’re all different. Some people are happy or comfortable doing call once or twice a week. Some people are not and could only do it once a month. So, ultimately each of us needs to know what makes us happy and where we fit in. To be, maybe, compassionate to yourself first.
Summary
Participants revealed activities and life choices that they believed bolstered their capacity for compassion. These included spending time with friends and family, time alone, taking holidays, travelling and exercise. They emphasized that having the self awareness to understand what energized them was critical. Participants also described how spiritual time for reflection through religious practices or other means was important for building their compassion. They described how exposure to art, music, nature, literature and other cultures broadened their horizons and deepened their understanding of and connection with people and the world around them. Making the time for these activities was considered crucial in increasing physician capacity for compassion.
89
They key finding in this section was that to cultivate compassion for their patients, physicians first had to care for themselves.