In the first part of this empathy series, I talked about how the world is broken and empathy is the key to healing. Now lets look at ways which we can increase our powers of empathy to better understand other people.
HOW TO RECHARGE OR INCREASE YOUR EMPATHY
If you haven’t been feeling very empathetic recently, don’t worry. There are plenty of things you can do to recharge or increase your empathy level. First of all, you can reduce the things that have a negative effect on empathy.
Stress is a huge empathy killer. That's why high-stress work environments are often toxic. People who are highly stressed become more self-focused, making them less likely to care about the problems of others.
So focus more on positive thoughts, take time to smell the flowers, and take a breather whenever you feel overwhelmed by responsibilities! The people around you will feel the effects, and your personal relationships will improve. I know this from experience. My wife and I get along much better and find that there is far less tension occurring in our relationship when neither of us are stressed.
If you come home from work stressed to the max and your wife or girlfriend starts complaining about something minor that happened to her that day, you may react with annoyance or impatience. But if you are relaxed, you are more likely to give her your full attention and an understanding ear. Which scenario is going to lead to a more positive result?.
Isolation is another big empathy-destroyer. Your ability to empathize improves when you use it. When you are not around people, you aren’t using your empathy enough. Social interactions over the internet don’t count.
Just look at the message boards or comment sections of many popular websites to see lack of empathy in action. People say astoundingly hurtful things over the internet that in most cases they would never say to someone if they were looking them in the eye and could actually see how it affected that person.
Next, you can start increasing the types of activities that have a positive effect on empathy. The number one is, of course, socializing. Laugh, cry, share, make memories, have deep conversations, connect!
But if you’re not an extrovert, you can only take so much socializing. That’s where reading comes in. Read lots of good fiction, get into the stories, care about the characters. Literary fiction is even better for increasing empathy than genre fiction, probably because the stories tend to be more character focused and the emotions of the characters are left more open to the reader to interpret. But genre fiction works too.
Another way to increase your empathy is by listening to classical music. This works because classical music stimulates our brains to not only feel emotions, but to try to understand what emotions the composers were trying to convey.
In the next part I will talk about how to put empathy into action and understand people you don't like.
This is a modified and expanded excerpt from an original article (written by me) that first appeared on my blog at http://www.shawndove.com/blog/.
Empathy workshop, part 1: Why the world needs more empathy
Empathy workshop, part 3: Getting better at understanding people you dislike or disagree with
Empathy workshop, part 4: Putting your empathy into action
Other articles by me:
Intolerance is fear of the unknown
The old man on the bench (a flash fiction story)
Can i crease you epathy without letting my guard down, I like to think I'm empathetic. I feel you can only understand, and help so much before a person needs to man up and help thereself. I'm just saying is there a point at which you distance yourself from certain people.
Certainly there are some people who are just not receptive to empathy. But the point of empathy is to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to understand what they feel and how and why they act or believe as they do. This should help you to realize what they need from you, if anything. In some cases leaving them to help themselves is what they need. But using empathy would lead you to do that only if it seems best for them.
But if someone is acting as a vampire and sucking you dry of energy and emotion, then sure, maybe there is a point where being empathetic is a bad idea. You still need to look after yourself. But hopefully understanding their plight will lead you to distance yourself in a gentle way, with minimal judgment.
Good insite i just wanting to make sure i can still be hard nosed, and empathetic at the same time lol. I understand, something i need to work on anyway's. I love helpping people out, just do t k ow how to go about it some times. I'm sure im not the only one.
Great posts that need more attention, Shawn! Have you signed up to @qurator yet? It's a good way to get seen.
Being an internet junkie, I found this part very true; something that makes me cringe far too often.
I haven't read a hell of a lot of fiction since I was a teenager. These days I read a lot of travelogues, and other types of non-fiction books about things that interest me personally. So I'm not really sure what you mean by literary fiction. Could you give me couple of examples?
Definitely in the past I have used fiction to develop empathy, as well as movies (I tend to watch movies that are emotionally challenging, like American History X, Requiem For A Dream and Blade Runner, as a few examples) and I found that those have definitely helped me with empathy. I think the two biggest ones for me, however, have been bartending (which I have done on-and-off for about 5 years), and travelling, especially to overwhelmingly conservative countries with vastly different values to western countries.
No I haven't signed up with @qurator yet. It seems like a great idea. However, I converted all my SBD earnings from my intro post into steempower before realizing that it might be a good idea to keep some around. Now I have to wait a couple more days until more SBD hit my account.
I haven't read a lot of literary fiction either, to be honest, although it's on my to do list. The thing about literary fiction is that it can be a bit difficult to get into, as the stories often lack excitement and the meanings of various events and character actions can be quite difficult to interpret. It's usually not something you can just pick up and read with your brain turned off. Most fiction that remains famous for many years is literary. Popular fiction tends to have a short lifespan. A few famous literary examples you probably heard of: The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita.
Great choices of movies, by the way! Requiem for a Dream is quite an experience. It's a very good movie, but not something I would want to watch repeatedly. I had to stare at a blank wall for about half an hour after it finished, because it affected me so strongly.
I have never tended bar, but I can certainly imagine that it's an especially great way to improve empathy! And yeah, traveling for sure. I should have included that one in the post!
I'm gonna jump on the qurator Discord channel right now and recommend you to @scrooger, who is the head curator. He sponsored my entrance fee because I'm a newbie, so he may do the same for you!
Would Ernest Hemingway count as literary fiction? I read The Sun Also Rises recently and it was incredibly moving, and I definitely felt a lot of empathy for his characters, who all had some pretty severe emotional shortcomings - sexism, racism, infidelity, aggression etc.
Wow, thank you. I appreciate it!
Hemingway is definitely literary. His fiction is probably among the most accessible of literary fiction, as he has a very straightforward style. I'm going to add The Sun Also Rises to my reading list, as it sounds worth a read!
I've contacted @scrooger and he's reviewing your blog. Fingers crossed!
Thanks! Curious how it went...
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