| The advice here is fairly practical but I think doesn't do much to encompass the premise of the question: which is how to you become more empathetic? Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This is a complex skill because it requires 1) understanding and 2) the ability to share and engage with someone else's feelings. To be more empathetic you need to understand why the person feels the way they do and this is often done through either shared experiences or insight into those feelings. Reading can be a great way to become more empathetic as it exposes you to the thought patterns of another individual in the experience they choose to write about. So reading various books about people's experiences can give you a broader perspective about peoples reactions, feelings, and thoughts to events that have occurred in their lives. There's really no shortcut when it comes to reading, the best advice is to read alot about various different things from the first hand perspective of others. Reading is just one way to understand people's shared experiences actually talking to a diverse set of people about their lives is another way to build this skill. As engineers we're generally not good at this but an example would be going to a bar asking about someone's life and just letting them speak as you listen. I'll also add its an amazing way to make friends and people are infinitely complex and seemingly "average" lives are filled with wonderful insights, experiences, and things to learn from. The second part is being able to share and engage, this requires an understanding of your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. If you lack the ability to understand how your feeling trying to understand someone else's feelings is generally moot. If you have trouble engaging with your thought patterns or feelings CBT can be helpful as well as mindfulness. When your able to understand your own emotions you'll more easily be able to understand other people's experiences as you'll more easily shift perspective of what your reaction would be to an experience someone else is having or had. Empathy is a hard skill but extremely important for intrapersonal relationships and ultimately success and it is a skill which can wax and wane based on active practice. An example why empathy is important is a founder who is more empathetic will be able to understand customer pain points more accurately, creating a better product which more purposefully solves a problem. |