“I can't understand you at all. Your decisions make no sense to me!” “I don't see your point of view.” “I'm having a hard time believing this is the reason for your behavior.” Pretty standard fair in lots of relationships, from romantic to parent-child, and even in the work place. We often times feel that we don't understand the purpose behind the things people say and do. And that's fairly natural and normal.
When we look at someone's actions, we usually look at it through our own lens, through our own filter and the life experiences that create that filter. We have a hard time looking at things through someone else's filter because we aren't them!. As individual and varied as humans can be, it can sometimes seem impossible to see something from another person's vantage. However, you totally can! The tool you use is empathy.
Empathy has a rather large connection of definitions and associations with it. Some people use sympathy and empathy interchangeably even though they are not the same thing precisely. Some define empathy as being able to stand in someone else's shoes metaphorically speaking. This is usually meant to convey that a person can feel the emotions of another person; like sadness, joy, anger, confusion, etc.
Empathy is also associated with compassion, meaning you feel bad for a person in a hurting or aggrieved state and wish for them to feel better and may even take action to try to make them feel better or are in some way supportive. Truthfully all these definitions work, but for a baseline, I'll go with being able to stand in someone else's shoes.
Being able to recognize the emotions of others and understand their behavior and reactions and decision making processes is a rather sophisticated process of cognitive imagination. It means you go from “I don't understand” to “I do understand” and the whole thing occurred in your head. You were able to ask yourself, “how might this person feel based on what's happened to them?” And you were able to answer and feel the correct emotion that correlates to this person's emotional state. That's empathy in action. Being able to feel for another person is a virtuous characteristic. It means you can interact and respond well to the distress of others without cruelty or malice.
I was watching a TED talk about this a while ago. The speaker said that developing empathy was a critical skill needed to deal with the changing and evolving paradigms of this planet and within our personal relationships. He made clear that in order to problem solve our most pressing issues, empathy was needed. I'd say he was right. Being able to not villanize a person for having different opinions from you is tolerance. Being able to understand how they came to those different views is empathy. If you can understand where a person is coming from, you can make effective inroads into a conversation built on mutual respect and possibly find some common ground with each other.
I say all of this because; empathy is not just useful for our survival as a species, it's an experience that lays the foundation of human connection and the beginnings of a thoughtful evolution and enlightenment. Empathy is an emotion that helps you understand your oneness with a person, that they are not so different from you and that we may have more in common than we first realized.
Empathy lets you recognize that you have similar needs and that you're just looking to fulfill them the best way you know how. Whether in the board room, with your children, or your lover; having the capacity to connect and understand “the other” will help shape healthy, thriving interactions with each other for years to come. Empathy is a skill worth developing, you will thank yourself and others will too.
Santee Blakey is a Life Coach and Licensed Massage Therapist at Soul Growth Wellness. When she's not biking, reading, or biking, or reading (she needs new hobbies, suggest her some:-), she'll be writing and enjoying a caramel frappacino in her favorite Starbucks. Follow her on Youtube for her series --> Self Acceptance: What It's Really Like (A Journey).
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