Being a "sensitive" person

If someone tells you, "You're so sensitive!" is that a compliment or a criticism? It could be either, depending on the context and tone of voice.

If you're sensitive toward the needs and feelings of others, you're sensitive in a good way. If you are extremely touchy about how people treat you or talk to you, you're sensitive in a bad way. It's kind of strange that the same word can have seemingly opposite definitions, but in fact they're not that different. They both have to do with sensing (i.e. using your senses), but one way is to be focused on yourself and one way is to be focused on others.

I remember a wise person telling me a few years ago, "Rather than being thin skinned and thick hearted, we should be thick skinned and thin hearted." The skin refers to how sensitive we are to ourselves and the heart refers to our sensitivity to others. Here are some benefits that I can think of for being thick skinned:

• Able to ignore irrelevant criticism.
• Able to be self-confident.
• Able to focus on a goal without getting easily distracted from it.

Here are some benefits to being thin hearted:

• Able to truly make a difference in another person's life.
• Able to experience love and compassion.
  
• Focusing on the needs and feelings of others has a therapeutic way of making us forget our own problems.

So where are you on the sensitivity continuum? Are you more sensitive toward yourself or toward others? More importantly, which direction on the continuum are you moving? Very often we change little by little and don't stop to notice it until we've move a long way. However, we should be taking ownership of our lives and making sure that our changes--even little ones--are in a positive direction.