What is ruthless compassion?

Ruthless Compassion is a philosophy that brings together two seemingly opposite concepts: those of fierceness and loving kindness. With ruthless compassion we are fierce in the pursuit of the truth and fierce in our interactions with others, but at the same time, we’re kind and loving with ourselves and others.

Over the years, I’ve found that too many of us struggle to see the truth about our bad choices because we can’t help criticizing ourselves over the things we see. When we practice ruthless compassion, we’re able to face the truth about the choices we’ve been making without beating ourselves up.

Seeing the truth:

Ruthless compassion also empowers us to see the truth about the people in our lives. We often beat ourselves up for being “stupid” over having gotten involved with hurtful people. This can prevent us from acknowledging just how hurtful they are and this denial can keep us stuck in toxic relationships.

With ruthless compassion, we can be gentle with ourselves for having gotten involved with someone hurtful. That enables us to face the truth about how bad they are and to more easily walk away from the relationship.

Ruthless compassion enables us to be more empowered in our relationships. The loving-kindness of this philosophy helps us to grow our self-esteem and to feel more entitled to good things.

No more people-pleasing:

For this reason, it empowers us give up people-pleasing. Instead, we put our own self-care first, and we don’t allow others to disrespect us, mistreat us or exploit us.

Because of our tendency toward harsh self-criticism, many of us never get the chance to make better choices; to grow and evolve and be the best we can be. We miss out on the opportunity to improve our relationships and have a better life, in general.

Ruthless compassion allows us to see things with clarity, but with kindness. We can face the mistakes we’ve been making and not be too hard on ourselves. After all, the point of seeing the truth isn’t to criticize ourselves but to have the opportunity to improve.

We can face the truth about the people in our lives, even if this truth is painful or embarrassing. We can acknowledge that we’re in an abusive relationship, for example, without feeling the usual shame. Ruthless compassion helps us to understand that it’s human to make mistakes.

Dealing with our challenges, head-on:

Ruthless compassion empowers us to face our challenges and deal with them, head-on. It helps us to understand what we’re doing and why, without the negative self-talk that would prevent us from evolving.

This philosophy enables us to be assertive; to speak our truth and set clear limits with others. With an attitude of fierceness, we don’t allow anyone to mess with us and we don’t enable anyone’s destructive (or self-destructive) behaviour.

For example, if our spouse is an alcoholic, it means not cleaning them up and making everything okay for them after they go on a binge. Otherwise, they never learn how bad it is for them (and us) when they’re abusing alcohol.

It means that if our sibling is being hurtful to us, we let them know that their behaviour is unacceptable. It also means having the courage to walk away from this sibling if they defensive or unreasonable in their response to our request for better treatment.

No longer tolerating hurtful behaviour:

Being fierce but kind means that loving someone has nothing to do with tolerating their bad behaviour. It shows us that we’re entitled to courtesy and consideration, and if this person can’t give us these things, they don’t deserve to be in a relationship with us.

Practicing ruthless compassion means that we can be kind (thoughtful, caring, considerate) as opposed to nice (trying too hard to get others to like and approve of us).

This philosophy helps us to see that kind people won’t judge us and that the unkind ones don’t matter. We care less about what other people think about us and we take more responsibility for our own self-worth. We’re focused on being the best we can be, rather than trying to be what other people want us to be.

Accessing the “inner warrior.” Silencing the “inner critic”:

With this philosophy, we can access our “inner warrior.” This is the part of ourselves that’s assertive, not aggressive. We can silence our “inner critic” and we can speak our minds, and say “no” to other people when we need to. We can set strong limits and walk away from those who refuse to treat us the way we deserve to be treated.

This philosophy helps us to be happier, because we’re taking good care of ourselves, tolerating less mistreatment, and always growing and improving.

It helps us to be more comfortable in our own skin and more easy-going with others, because we have nothing to prove and because we trust ourselves to take care of ourselves. Ruthless compassion. I highly recommend it.

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