Empathy

“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.” Daniel H. Pink

Some people may describe empathy as being the ability to feel what someone else is going through. We get to experience what someone else is experiencing. As they say, being able to put yourself into another person’s shoes. Having the ability to be empathetic helps us to connect with others and build our relationship together. We may also find that more people want to be around us as our empathetic disposition helps us to relate with each other. Being empathetic can also bring us closer together, as others may feel they are heard and not judged. It may also help us to build trust in our relationships. When someone shows empathy towards us, we may feel that we are somehow experiencing the same emotions together. We can experience feeling ‘together’; we are connected together, which can be a wonderful experience.

Following are some ideas to help you to connect and create empathy at the same time. Choose your favourite from this list and see what happens. Have fun!

• Play a board game together as a family. Take note of everyone’s emotions and how they change throughout the game. How do you think they were feeling?
• Go for a walk to a local space, like the park or beach, and notice everything around you.
• When you are down the street, look at a stranger from a distance and wonder what their life is like. Discuss with the family when you get home.
• During dinner, imagine what it would be like for some people who have very little to eat. How would they feel?
• Can you imagine someone who would like some flowers that were picked from your garden? Why would they like them?
• Next time you are at the shops, ask the person serving you, “What is something different that has happened to you today?” When you get home, talk about how you think that person would have felt.
• Talk about who you think would benefit from a ‘random act of kindness’ and why they would.
• Do you know someone who would really love a big hug from you? Discuss.
• Who would get a surprise from receiving a letter or card from you? Why would that make a difference to them?
• Do you know anyone who would love to have some of your clothes that you don’t wear anymore? Discuss.

A while ago, I taught a bright young girl in Year Three. Her parents approached me about a concern this girl was having. She was counting everything and was worried that she was not normal. She would sometimes stress about her counting and work herself into a state of worry. I felt for this girl, that she was making a big deal about something that may occur to others as trivial. I could empathise with her; thinking that she was in some kind of way different to others, strange or even weird. I could imagine myself in her world of thinking that I was not normal, whatever that is.

Following this empathetic experience, I gathered the class together and I shared some of the weird things that I do, like counting the number of steps as I walk up a flight of stairs, or hanging a piece of clothing on the washing line with two pegs of the same colour. Other kids in the class shared how they do weird things too. As the discussion progressed, I saw this young girl come to the realisation that either she was as normal or as weird as everyone else, and she started to smile.

When we show empathy towards another, it can bring us closer together. “When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.” Stephen Covey