31–40 of 174 posts
I read once that bending your neck down (like when you look at your phone) lowers empathy. So to raise empathy practice looking up. This sounds like bs at first to me but when you think about it there's probably something to it as you look down at people beneath you and up at people above you. I find those towards the bottom of totem poles tend to be more empathetic (on average).
I use two complementing strategies: - Developing empathy towards myself first, that is, being able to observe feelings that arise within me and then being able to accept these feelings as they are. I have found this to be very relieving. A technique that helped me was meditation; training the mind like a muscle to be able to observe & recognize feelings. - Turning this outwards to others, the works of Marshall Rosenb…
Also second Rosenberg's book. It can come across as condescending if applied too heavily but it's a great analysis on language during conflict.
Instead:
1) The Golden Rule: Treat others as you'd yourself want to be treated. This is an ever-evolving loop of growth and learning throughout your life. You are never finished!
2) In job, service, family, nearly everywhere, people respond better to you when your behaviour and communications reflect the same shared goal. What might those goals be. As with #1 this is also a life-long quest.
3) As you gain better responses with people or get to know people better, you might consider asking for information, how to do stuff, help or start leading new initiatives.
At the same time, it is important to realize how the responsibility areas work within your organization, and avoid taking on work that you shouldn't take on!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is good advice though saying "I am sorry to hear that", seems a little shallow. I think I solutionize cause I care or maybe I just like problem solving. Though coming up with an answer instantly belittles their problem.
What you're hitting on is the difference between sympathy and empathy. Both have a role in helping people. "I'm sorry to hear that" = sympathy "It sounds like you're exhausted by that." = empathy Notice the noun in those sentences: first one is you, second one is them. What matters is what we say after those, too. There's a big difference between, "It sounds like you're exhausted that. [Solution proposal]" and "It so…
Really glad you brought up this point too. It comes off as extremely condescending if you don’t fully give someone space to express themselves. Simple follow up questions can be useful to help them develop their thoughts further, but firing back a solution instantly against something they may have put a great deal of thought into isn’t the right thing to do.
Apply your existing analysis skills. Build a mental model of a person as you would with a device. Your growing understanding of a device is a kind of empathy, enabling you to live with it in greater harmony. We organic devices are just more of the same. Given the low computational threshold for the emergence of complex behavior, heuristics are frequently conserved between software and wetware. Many people will respon…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is good advice though saying "I am sorry to hear that", seems a little shallow. I think I solutionize cause I care or maybe I just like problem solving. Though coming up with an answer instantly belittles their problem.
What you're hitting on is the difference between sympathy and empathy. Both have a role in helping people. "I'm sorry to hear that" = sympathy "It sounds like you're exhausted by that." = empathy Notice the noun in those sentences: first one is you, second one is them. What matters is what we say after those, too. There's a big difference between, "It sounds like you're exhausted that. [Solution proposal]" and "It so…
Depending on your personal situation you might want to seek professional help. But here are some ideas to get you started: Practice making eye contact especially when someone is opening up about their feelings. Then say things that show you know how they feel. Human brains can mirror feelings, like pain, from another humans [0]. So, to empathize with someone you need to get on their level emotionally and really feel…
Take care not to “me too, ” as it can detract from the person seeking empathy.
(That is regardless of whether you can quote research to the contrary. That is, statements that some people in some cases given some environment in a given moment or period could not pass some bar that some researcher has set.)
Your goal is to discover the person standing in front of you by allowing yourself to see them as a fully capable and imaginative human.
The other thing is to acknowledge that everyone is at some stage in their life. They have realized some things and others not. You want to know how they see the world and how they interpret what happens to them. Usually here you'll discover that they make some rigid assumptions about the world whenever they are mentioning some issue. And usually that issue has something to do with their relationship with other people or with the way that they view themselves.
Within all this is of course you as the listener. If something is making you uncomfortable in this process you should be very honest with yourself what that is. There are of course cases where people are very deeply entangled in their own world and I don't think in those cases it is beneficial for either of you to participate in the conversation.
To add to the previous point, I think realizing that there is a lot to be learned by allowing people to share the way they think with you. I think you would be surprised by what people are willing to tell you if you allow them and the kind of deep relationships you can form that way. It's also very surprising to realize that most issues that people have beneath a very shallow surface of circumstances are really almost the same. And they mostly have to do with the way that they talk to themselves about what happens to them.