Achieving Empathy

There’s a reason people say “try walking a mile in their shoes“. Achieving empathy isn’t just about putting yourself in someone else’s position, it’s also about seeing that position from someone else’s perspective. True empathy is being able to strip away your own thoughts, feelings and judgment in order to clearly see a situation through someone else eyes, with their heart, filters and experiences taken into account. Most people make the mistake of just putting themselves in another’s position and saying “what would I do if I were in this situation?”. This approach often leads to poor judgment calls, misunderstandings and bad advice. Why? Because experiencing empathy isn’t about how you think or feel at all. It’s about simulating what they are experiencing and relating to it. Even in an identical scenario, they’ll never think, feel or behave quite the same way as you would.

Of course, we’ll never get perfect at achieving empathy – our brains are (sadly) wired to put ourselves at the center of the action. The good news is that we can take steps to improve our approach to get better insights into the hearts and minds of others. It starts by first taking ourselves completely out of the equation and then asking “what is this person feeling/thinking based on their experiences, and how can I relate to that”. This is hard to do, but it’ll get you off on the right foot. Once you focus on the shoes, you’ll be in a much better position to know what it really feels like to walk the mile.