Mindful, Compassionate Living

The Compassionate Life exists to promote reflection, education, and community building on compassionate living, spirituality, mindfulness and self-care among hospice and healthcare professionals to encourage our united focus on compassionate, sustainable healthcare.

As a healthcare and helping professional, did you know when you feel good about doing good while practicing effective, mindful self-care that you provide excellent care and your risk for burnout is low?  That is the Compassionate Life, it is a journey that demands courage and community.

Self-care is defined as the daily process of being aware of and attending to one’s basic physiological, emotional and spiritual needs including the shaping of one's daily routine, relationships, and environment as needed to promote well-being. Often we think of self-care as “selfish” or something that we do after we’ve taken care of our other “duties”, “responsibilities” and “obligations”.  Self-care can come to feel like another obligation.

Just for a moment, we invite you to think of self-care in a different way.  By researching self-care strategies and well-being objectively with validated instruments, we have discovered the mindful, self-care strategies that are linked with wellness.  In short, feeling good about doing good and mindful self-care leads to vibrate, compassionate living.

We encourage you to use this wellness assessment as a quick check-up. On completion, you can view your self-care and well-being scores. Also, you will be given custom suggestions for improving your self-care efforts based on your scores.

Click Take the Wellness Assessment to begin.

Here is feedback on the assessment

“Thank you so much for this excellent self assessment for helping professionals. I will definitely plan to substitute it for the instrument I have been using in my social work practice seminars at Westfield State University and I will pass the link along to colleagues. This is an important area for our students to be thinking about and this tool will help.” ~ Dr. Katherine Walsh, author of Grief and Loss: Theories and Skills for the Helping Professions

“I am extremely excited about this work…this is only the beginning of staff traveling down a healthier road.” ~ Rev. Ruth Lesher, Bereavement Services Manager

“Thanks for this helpful feedback.” ~ Registered Nurse

“This has been very helpful for me to develop a more healthy relationship with my father...I don't feel guilty for taking care of myself” ~ Family Caregiver

“Excellent assessment, I like the feedback that I received.” ~ Home Health Aide

“Thanks for this, I loved it!!” ~ Social Worker

“Very important to help our staff practice better self-care.” ~ Chaplain

“Great!  Very interesting and good food for thought.” ~ Registered Nurse

Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift that I was put on earth to give to others
— Parker Palmer