Empathy!
I always believe that I'm a person who is very empathetic. Empathy is a quality - I would not call it a feeling! To me, it occurs that this is one thing that can take you a long way and bring in lot of good relationships to your life. Now that I started blogging and apparently this happened to be the first thought that came to my mind, I just cheked the net to find out what exactly that means. Wiki says - Empathy, which literally translates as 'in feeling', is the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes".
Empathy thus is not just understanding people, but being able to think on their behalf and act accordingly. It takes time to reach this level in your relationships, but once you reach there, your relationships tend to be stronger. I'm not sure if it can be cultivated in one's mind on purpose, but a concious effort can always be made to put yourself in other's shoes.
A simple situation - your child at home throws something down and breaks it. As a parent your immediate reaction will be to scold him/her. If you are able to look at his/her face once before you start screaming at them and you are able to recognise their expression, you wouldn't want to scream at them. Understand that they did not break it on purpose. The girl or boy was quite unaware of the fact that it breaks and creates problems to you. Even if they were aware, they too didn't want to do it on purpose, it just happened.
Let us get a little more serious - the guy who scraped your car last week, also didn't purposely want to cause harm to you. As I write this, I just get reminded of one of those email forwards that I got - a cab driver who smiles at the guys who shout at him due to a traffic problem. He explains to his customer that people set off from their homes as garbage trucks, who want to dump all those on to someone else whom they meet on the road. Uff..of garbage trucks and email forwards, may be sometime later.
From a professional point of view, people who are empathetic end up being good people managers. Recently heard that call center jobs put empathy level as a measurement parameter. Essentially, people who can empathise with a customer will be able to achieve good results from the call. Yet another situation where a high level of empathy can help you - when you interact with a customer to know his needs and suggest a solution to him!
Get more info about this on wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy)- you will know more about the negative effects of this feeling of being over empathetic. True, it can harm yourself, and it can create problems to you. I don't want to get there, because I'm a positive guy and never would want to see the negative side of a quality I possess :-)
Strongly believe that being empathetic can bring you better, strong relationships and help you make more friends. This also lets you lead a friction free life. Next time you pick up a fight with someone, try to switch yourself a while to the other person's shoes and think about it. May be you stand a chance to avoid that fight and retain a good relationship.
Empathy thus is not just understanding people, but being able to think on their behalf and act accordingly. It takes time to reach this level in your relationships, but once you reach there, your relationships tend to be stronger. I'm not sure if it can be cultivated in one's mind on purpose, but a concious effort can always be made to put yourself in other's shoes.
A simple situation - your child at home throws something down and breaks it. As a parent your immediate reaction will be to scold him/her. If you are able to look at his/her face once before you start screaming at them and you are able to recognise their expression, you wouldn't want to scream at them. Understand that they did not break it on purpose. The girl or boy was quite unaware of the fact that it breaks and creates problems to you. Even if they were aware, they too didn't want to do it on purpose, it just happened.
Let us get a little more serious - the guy who scraped your car last week, also didn't purposely want to cause harm to you. As I write this, I just get reminded of one of those email forwards that I got - a cab driver who smiles at the guys who shout at him due to a traffic problem. He explains to his customer that people set off from their homes as garbage trucks, who want to dump all those on to someone else whom they meet on the road. Uff..of garbage trucks and email forwards, may be sometime later.
From a professional point of view, people who are empathetic end up being good people managers. Recently heard that call center jobs put empathy level as a measurement parameter. Essentially, people who can empathise with a customer will be able to achieve good results from the call. Yet another situation where a high level of empathy can help you - when you interact with a customer to know his needs and suggest a solution to him!
Get more info about this on wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy)- you will know more about the negative effects of this feeling of being over empathetic. True, it can harm yourself, and it can create problems to you. I don't want to get there, because I'm a positive guy and never would want to see the negative side of a quality I possess :-)
Strongly believe that being empathetic can bring you better, strong relationships and help you make more friends. This also lets you lead a friction free life. Next time you pick up a fight with someone, try to switch yourself a while to the other person's shoes and think about it. May be you stand a chance to avoid that fight and retain a good relationship.
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