My Day Of Compassion Analysis

Compassion, to me, is having a concern for others in which you can act upon to help others. During my day of compassion, there were four notable recipients, including two strangers, a friend, and my roommate. I consider myself a compassionate and helpful person, however, I felt that I went out of my way to be compassionate which is the main purpose of taking one day to be compassionate towards others. The overall response of my assistance through my day of compassion was appreciation, except those that know me because to them, it was another day of just being helpful. This experience gave me a new outlook on selflessness and what true compassion is.

My first notable experience with my day of compassion was when I was leaving from the Coleman

building with a classmate and I saw a woman carrying a box that seemed a bit heavy. I offered to help her carry the box and she was very shocked that someone would think to help her. When I returned outside to my classmate, he stated that he should have been the one to help but I was more enthusiastic about it. I feel that I may have been an inspiration for hand to show compassion and help someone throughout his day through my act of kindness. This second event that stood out to me was in the school cafeteria. My friends and I were sitting at one end of a table and two other students, who we did not know, sat at the other end of the table. As we were about to leave the table and take up our plates, the girl knocked over her cup, spilling all her water on the table. Usually, I would have just walked away but instead I decided to bring her napkins and help her clean the spill. She was shocked that someone that she did not know would come and help clean up a mess that she had made, which her own friend in front of her did not. Right after this event, my friend wanted to talk about her boyfriend issues with me so we came to my dorm room. When she was talking, I gave her my undivided attention and actively listened by giving her feedback after she finished explaining her situation.
The act of kindness that stood out the most to me was with my roommate. My roommate and I have not been getting along for this entire semester, we had not spoken to each other in over two weeks due to a confrontation I had with her, explaining how I felt about an incident. At the end of the day she came into the room yelling on the phone before she aggressively hung up and began to start crying on her bed. I was doing my hair by the sink and usually I would have just finished my hair and either left or just ignored her to do something on my laptop. I honestly almost felt forced to show her compassion, but I decided to try it out for the sake of Day of Compassion. I went over to her with my box of tissues and asked if there was anything she wanted to talk about, but she was still very emotional so I decided to wait while giving her a consoling rub on her back. After she finished crying, she said that she did not want to talk about the situation so I just gave her a hug and decided to go to my friend's room because she invited company over. When I reflected on this, I didn't feel any better about myself but I did not feel guilty as I usually do when I ignore her because of the distance in our relationship now. From me being compassionate in her time of need I expected her to be more appreciative and we would not have the awkwardness in the room anymore but that was not the case. However, on Saturday I left the room to get something from a friend and my roommate texted me saying that she left the door unlocked because she thought I was coming back. This was significant to me because she had locked me out the room about two times before, intentionally.
After the Day of Compassion, I feel that I prefer my normal self because I felt as if I had to take on everyone's stresses even more that day than normal. I am a compassionate person to most people daily so that is part of the reason that those who know me, did not show as much noticeable appreciation as the strangers did towards me. Though helping others is thought of a positive action, there are costs to compassion. Being compassionate and helpful towards people can sometimes cause unnecessary emotional stress, in the example with my friend, because if the person that is needing help explains negative situations it can sometimes mentally drain the other. Another cost of being helpful with compassion is being taken advantage of. When someone is a compassionate person is in their nature to help whenever possible, therefore people sometimes can rely on a person too much because of how helpful they are. In my personal experience I feel that it has gotten to the point where I feel guilty whenever I tell another person "no" when given the chance to help another. Even though I feel like it is the right thing to help people, it ultimately affects me negatively because I am more concerned with their issues than the things that I have going on in my personal life. Though there are cost of helping others there are more benefits such as the do-good feel-good effect, increasing the chances of the norm of reciprocity and gaining social status (Russell, 2018). These benefits are when one does a good act, they are inclined to feel good about themselves while others are more likely to return the compassion to the other and people of compassion are viewed as virtually "good" which allows them to be more socially liked than someone who is not (Russell, 2018). Overall, the benefits of compassion outweigh the costs and more people should show compassion to others daily.
To persuade others to become more compassionate towards each other, two techniques that I would introduce would be to single out individuals and personalize people in need to those that can help.

Calling out individuals would be effective because the person would gain a sense of personal responsibility instead of going about their individual business. I feel that this will be the most effective method because when someone is asked to do something it has been proven that they are more likely to help when they are personally asked for something (Russell, 2018). Also, I feel that if I can personalize someone in need it to someone that can help it would increase their empathy and chances of helping because they will have a background knowledge of how they are about to help. This would also reduce cost of stress because the pressure would not just be on one specific person. There are many concepts in social psychology that can be used to foster a more compassionate society such as social responsibility, raising awareness of the bystander effect and increasing prosocial behaviors in this society. The bystander effect is a large issue in America, it is when the what is this become less likely to help someone because others are not helping. The reason that this is an issue is because it decreases compassion within our nation because we just assume that the person in need isn't truly in need when they very well could be. If the bystander effect were decreased then prosocial behavior would increase and others would be more likely to want to benefit another person (Russell, 2018). If we as a nation came together to be more compassionate, there be no limit of words positivity could come from

it.