Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
What is empathy?
Empathy is a useful tool for YOU to live better.
I will explain: You can use empathy to understand the world better and to decipher people in
situations of confusion.
By using empathy, you can solve practical problems in a much easier and less stressful
way, increasing your levels of happiness.
Let’s make an important clarification.
Empathy is not about being politically correct.
Empathy is not about being charitable or kind.
First of all, empathy is a useful tool for you to have a better life.
In any type of relationship, be it personal or professional, what do you prefer?
Dealing with someone who is interested in cooperating with you?
Or dealing with someone who is angry with you?
Empathy is about you increasing your chances of cooperating with others by trying to see,
feel and understand the world from their perspective.
What is the point of all this?
When you successfully put yourself in someone else’s shoes, the result is that you are
able to better understand the world around you.
This way, you are able to communicate more effectively to solve problems in a much easier
way because you understand people’s real needs.
Empathy is a tool that helps you adjust your behaviour according to each person’s needs.
The most common definition of empathy is the ability to see the world from another person’s
perspective, as if you were that other person.
Even though we all have this ability, it is not easy for everyone to empathise.
Like any skill, it can be trained and needs to be used constantly in order to reach its
full potential.
A simple way of finding out how empathetic you are is to see how interested people are
in keeping the conversation going when you are communicating with them.
When you use empathy, they feel understood, respected, valued, welcome.
And that motivates them to continue talking in an increasingly open way, without fear
of being judged.
When you speak with little empathy, people tend to get offended or simply feel uncomfortable
or uninterested in continuing that interaction.
When you use empathy and really try to understand someone else’s perspective, with that person’s
limitations, you can truly understand their problem.
That way you can look for a viable way to help them solve their problem.
And it is very likely that, by natural reciprocity, they will also be interested in helping you,
cooperating with you, and paying attention to whatever you have to say.
When you practice empathy this way, you leave your own convictions and judgements aside,
to try to understand why that person is acting in a certain way.
When you are able to understand that, you have a powerful tool that will help you to
solve your practical problems, and also benefit the people around you.
Empathy is not charity.
You can use empathy as a tool to solve your own problems.
Do you remember the episode about selfish forgiveness?
It was episode 180 of Hello!
Seiiti Arata series [https://arata.se/hello180].
Basically, the idea is that when you forgive someone, the one who benefits straight away
is… yourself!
Forgiving makes you feel good.
In a similar way, empathy is a skill that is beneficial to you when you use it.
Empathy is one of the best examples of a win-win situation, in which everyone wins.
When you practice empathy, you are not only helping someone else.
You are helping yourself by increasing your happiness levels whilst you benefiting people
around you.
That happens for two reasons.
The first reason is more practical.
When you help someone close to you, you also help to solve some of your problems.
For example, someone on your team has a problem which is affecting their performance at work.
That overloads you and the other people in your workplace.
If you help that person solve their problem, you are also helping yourself be less overloaded.
You can also use empathy if you are having trouble selling a house, negotiating a contract
or even solving a fight with a friend, a family member or a work colleague...
Empathy will help you to negotiate better and you will solve the dilemma in a much more
efficient way.
Empathy diminishes your suffering as it frees you from being self-centered.
The second reason why empathy solves your problems is more abstract than the first reason.
When you help other people by putting yourself in their shoes, you are practicing leaving
your self-centeredness.
Being self-centered is when you always think about yourself, and get stuck in problems
that often only exist in your head, or problems that are only as big as they are because they
are in your head.
You know when you are trapped in your thoughts, in your life goals, in your emotions?
When you keep wishing things were different?
When you keep feeding your problems with your mind until they become much bigger than they
really are?
That tendency that we have of thinking the world revolves around us is self-centeredness.
Self-centeredness is bad, it makes you ignore other people and the possibility of solving
their problems.
Self-centeredness creates a mentality of scarcity of solutions that prevents you from seeing
the abundance of options you have to solve the problems in your life.
That exaggerated fixation on your own person practically disappears when you practice empathy.
When you have genuine empathy towards someone else, you automatically leave your self-centeredness
aside.
That happens because it is impossible to be focused on yourself and someone else at the
same time.
Empathy is not a gift, but a skill that can be learned regardless of your age or personality.
Now you might be convinced that empathy is a good thing.
But maybe you are telling yourself that you are too old to start learning it, or that
you have a rougher personality, or some other excuse.
What you need to understand is that empathy is not a gift, it is not an innate talent.
It is not that you are born with or without the ability to empathise.
Empathy is just a skill.
And, like any skill, it can be learned.
The more you practice your empathy, the greater your ability to empathise will be.
In theory, we all have the ability to empathise.
But if we do not exercise our empathy, it gets worse and worse, just like any other
skill we do not practice.
And how do you practice any skill?
You need to carry out the activity while actively seeking to reach the best result possible.
And, at the end, you need to examine the results of your performance.
Depending on the results, you may need to make adjustments to improve on your next attempts.
For example, in order to throw a basketball into the basket, you need to adjust the angle
and strength of the shot depending on your previous results.
But in the specific case of empathy, the difficulty is that every interaction is unique.
There is no way you can repeat the same interaction and change the way you communicate to train
your empathy.
That is why empathy requires constant dedication.
Something you can do is practice with someone you really like.
With your children, with your parents, with your partner.
If you do it with someone you like a lot, it will be easier for you to put yourself
in their place and try to solve their problems.
Then, you keep making progress.
Start using empathy to understand the world of the people around you: work colleagues,
extended family, close friends.
Your ability to reap the rewards of empathy will increase a little bit every time you
practise, both for yourself and for the people in your life.
Like any skill, the first few times you try it, the process will be difficult and the
results will not be as good.
With empathy, it is the same thing.
If you have never practiced it before, you will find it difficult in the beginning, but
you will improve little by little with time.
And one day the people around you will praise your ability to put yourself in other people’s
shoes, to solve practical problems and to help others.
Empathy, or the ability to put yourself into other people’s shoes to see the world from
their point of view, is an amazing tool for you to understand reality, help people and,
on top of that, solve your own problems and enhance your happiness levels.
Empathy is not charity, it is not kindness, it is not being politically correct.
It is simply a skill related to communication that you can start building up today, practising
with people you really like.
If you would like a happier and more simple life, I invite you to watch a special class
from the Happiness course by visiting https://arata.se/happiness right now.