Hey there folks welcome to episode 4 of a pebble in a pond podcast. I'm gonna ask
everybody that's listening to forgive me. I don't think I have a cold but
I have had a cough for the past I don't know 12 hours or so and so if there's
some weird sounding edits or moments where I kind of cut off it's because I
had to mute the mic so I could cough because you don't want me to cough into
the mic. That said as you can hear my my throat is a little tight there that said
when I tell you that I possibly have a cold or I may be sick what does that
make you think how does it make you feel for a lot of people the idea or the
dimension of being sick will conjure some mental images they'll think of
chicken soup or they'll think of a warm blanket or they'll think of a thermometer
things that have kind of been programmed into us by you know all sorts of imagery
some people will kind of rear back and be like oh don't get me sick which
obviously isn't a problem on a podcast but some people will react to sickness
in a negative way and I'll say oh no what is it they'll try to figure out
what it is you know do I have is it just a cold is it to have COVID you know all
of these different things and then there are other people that when they hear
that I'm sick they for even a brief moment they can relate to that and they
kind of they're like oh I know what that's like I know I've had that cough
or I've and they they immediately put themselves in my place and they say oh
well I've had that I've you know you got a little bit of a scratch and you're
you're coughing a bunch yeah I've had that well those those last people
without knowing it possibly are practicing the point of this episode
which is empathy what is empathy the actual definition of empathy is the
ability to understand and share the feelings of another so while me being
sick or having a cold you empathy wouldn't be oh I relate to blowing my
nose or oh I know what it's like to cough that's not really what empathy is
empathy is that you relate to the feelings of being being sick you say oh
I know what that's like that sucks to be so tired that sucks to be so you know
worn down or to you know the the feelings that you're feeling somebody
with high levels of empathy will start to understand how you feel because
they'll feel it for a brief moment that's kind of how they see the world is
through the lens of other people's emotions so before we get we dive in too
deep I just want to make one quick understanding known here and that is
we've been saying that this episode is about empathy and understanding and
the reason that we've been saying that is because there are a lot of people out
there many more than I had ever realized that don't understand or know what
empathy actually is these are people that have never don't understand the
experience of it and so they don't know if they have ever experienced empathy now
we're gonna get into the different kinds of empathy and almost everybody has
experienced one kind or another but for a lot of people people that tend to be a
little bit more cerebral they don't they don't necessarily experience the
emotions the same way so they don't consider it to be empathy they think
that that's a made-up thing so we use the term understanding although
understanding is essentially the cognitive version of empathy
understanding is you saying oh you don't feel good or oh I see here happy or oh
and and then you know diagramming in your head exactly why understanding why
this person's happy how they become how they became that way you kind of you
kind of experience what they're going through by literally mapping it out
intellectually whereas an empath they don't need that map they just go with
you on it when you're happy they're happy they're happy for you and they're
happy for themselves as well it becomes an energy source for a for a real empath
positive energy creates energy inside of them and then they can use that to power
more empathy but like I said we're not gonna get too deep into that just yet
there's a lot to cover so let's go ahead and start the episode
so empathy huh that's really not an easy egg to crack or the nut to crack I
don't know I actually spent a lot longer researching and looking at this episode
now when I say researching I mean doing what most of us do just reading things
online and stuff like that which helped me you know it gave me things to talk
about but it still left me with almost as many questions as I had started with
so as we as we go through this discussion there may be some pieces that
I'm gonna you know just kind of throw out there and you're gonna have to do a
little digging for for the whole picture on some of these things I can't give it
all here it literally I mean this has been two weeks that I've been working on
this and there's so much more as far as studies that have been done and ideas
new and old that have to do with empathy that that I can't I can't cover it all
in 45 minutes so if I say something here that sparks your interest or gets you
you know thinking maybe I maybe I should look at that then you probably gonna
need to look at it on your own because you know I can only do so much so we're
gonna start with a very close to me it's very close to me this quote it's by a
well you know uncle Walt everybody knows uncle Walt Walt Whitman and he said let
me make sure I have the exact wording correct he said I do not ask the wounded
person how he feels I myself become the wounded person I think that that that
little one sentence quote may be one of the most accurate portrayals of what it
really means to have empathy and what I mean by that is as somebody who has for
lack of a better word struggled with controlling the amount of empathy that I
have or that I exhibit for a good portion of my life it can very much be a
double-edged sword most of the empathy that we're going to discuss here that
we're going to talk about is something that you will practice something that
you will hone something that you will get better with and that's how it is for
most people it is it is a skill that they can acquire and it's a there's
definitely a skill that you can you can work on and get better with for me and a
few others that I know personally it's it was it was just naturally part of us
we maybe it was the way we were raised my mother's very empathic maybe it was
you know the area that we were in there could be any number of factors that
apply to making somebody a little bit more empathic than maybe somebody else
but whatever the the concoction that created me and the environment that I
was in I have oftentimes had issues where I I will have I can't think of
another way of saying it and I couldn't really find a term for it but inadvertent
empathy is the best way of putting it and what I mean by that is sometimes
we'll go to the store or you know we'll be out somewhere and well you know
actually let me let me put it this way some of you may have seen the movie
unbreakable if you haven't seen it I'm gonna describe a scene without spoilers
for the most part there is a scene in the like close to the middle but closer
like in between the middle and the end of the movie where the main character
is played by Bruce Willis is in a train station a train a train tunnel type area
I don't they might they might have actually been like Grand Central Station
I don't know I don't remember where exactly he was but he's there with his
hands out in the middle of this train area and as people walk by him and he's
he his hand brushes up against them or he grazes them he sees these brief
images of them being happy or sad or you know just just different things that are
going on in their life and as he's as he's doing that once again I'm gonna
try not to spoil anything even though the movies like 15 years old or maybe
even older than that actually he basically reaches his hands out and is
is experiencing a cheater face way of doing empathy nobody can know nobody
that I know of can actually go up and touch somebody and see their memories
and what's going on in their life elsewhere this guy can so but that gives
you an idea of what I'm talking about in this next part if you've seen that
movie and you understand the scene that that can happen to a certain degree and
it has happened to me many times as I said in another episode one of my
favorite things to do especially as a teenager was to just go places and
people watch and this this empathy discussion ties directly to that I loved
going out and seeing the looks on people's faces and the way that they
would communicate with each other the way that you know some couples would
hold hands and the way that some people would bicker with each other or fight I
loved seeing that because I was learning human interaction the entire time and
it's just something that's always been a fascination of mine is trying to
understand people and using that understanding to predict people the
hours and hours that I spent in malls and virgin megastore and all these other
places just standing and watching people ended up being invaluable for the rest
of my life so there were a lot of times where we would be in a place I would be
you know in a mall in one of the walkways in the mall and I would just
stand obviously I wouldn't stand there in a raincoat with my hands out like
Bruce Willis because I wouldn't have made any sense but I do I would stand in
a crowd and I wouldn't you know close my eyes or go into a trance or any of that
stuff but I would I could just sit as long as I was able to be close enough to
people to really see that you know the affection on the face and things like
that I would sit and I would try to read whether they were happy or sad whether
they were angry what they're angry about all of these different emotions and as I
the more I did it the stronger I got out of the better I got at it so even
people that were hiding emotions kind of become open books after you've you've
honed your empathy the way that I had and that goes back to the original point
of this when you practice and perfect not perfect I don't want to sound like
I'm being a dick but when you practice to the point or to the goal of
perfection it can really create it can open a open a crazy door where all of a
sudden you were just walking through a public place and you see somebody and
you immediately feel pain or you immediately feel discomfort or you feel
whatever shame and you don't know why you don't know why you don't realize
you're picking it up from just some random person that you saw but that's
what that's what happens and it happens all the time so when I say that when I
say that empathy you know could be troubling for some people that's really
what I mean no that's not to say that it's it's necessarily bad it's just
uncomfortable especially if you don't really understand where it's coming from
it can be really disconcerting to have your emotions change based upon the
people around you at least in that way where you kind of feel like oh that
person's sad I'm sad that person's happy I'm happy so it's really important as
you learn to flex your empathy muscles that you're able to maintain a strong
personal emotional state to help kind of create a barrier between the the
emotions that you're taking in from other people and the emotions that
you're actually trying to feel yourself now why are we doing this why are we
talking about empathy as a subject at all well if you go back to the episode
two we talked about how there are certain aspects of people's
personalities that seemingly a lot of people agreed that these are these are
the things that are the most important aspects of becoming a good person of
being a good person empathy was one of those things and really that just makes
a lot of sense right like the ability to kind of relate to others on an emotional
level to be able to understand their pain to be able to understand what
they're going through that's where compassion comes from that's where
understanding comes from that's where all of the abilities to reach beyond
yourself reach beyond the things that you need and help somebody where they
are that's where that comes from there's a I don't remember his name now there's
a psychologist that once said the empathy is looking into someone else's
eyes and seeing the world through their eyes and that most people don't
understand that they think that they think that empathy is looking into
someone else's eyes and seeing the world reflected in their eyes but that's not
the case what you're trying to do is really understand it from their point
of view the whole walk a mile and someone else's shoes thing that's what
you're trying to do you're trying to understand it from their point of view
and so with that in mind we're gonna talk about this next part here and this
is part that a lot of people are gonna disagree with and some people are gonna
have real problems with and this is not an attempt to swing this podcast into a
political discussion but that is in today's world empathy is on the decline
they actually have all sorts of ways of testing this and seeing the what they
call the social empathy levels and they have been declining and declining for
over a decade now as a society and this is not just American society this is
throughout the world as a society as humans we are losing our empathy it is
becoming more and more scarce it is a finite resource that is that is well as
of right now it's a finite resource that is we're losing in this world one one
researcher said that empathy is studying empathy as a as a researcher now is much
like being a climate scientist studying the polar ice caps now you're just
starting to understand how important they are you're just starting to
understand how you know how much research needs to be done and how we
need to focus on these things as they're disappearing you said this is the same
thing with empathy is that it really does feel like it's just going further
and further away and one of the reasons for that is the massive political divide
especially in America where one side is this way and one side is the other way
and if you voted for this or you voted for that you're you're just so there's
just such polar opposites and we immediately throw ourselves into the
farthest camp to one side or the other and listen let me tell you those that
know me those that were are getting to know me they know exactly where I stand
on this historically speaking I am not exactly the most empathetic or tolerant
person when it comes to certain ideologies and a lot of that stems from
this idea well my firmly held belief that we should never ever be empathetic
or tolerate hatred or bigotry or you know we should not reach out with with
love in our hearts for those ideologies for the people yes but when when they
come with those ideologies as their shield and their sword you at that point
in time you have to turn your back you cannot you cannot try to relate to
someone that is actively trying to destroy the people that you love the
whatever group you're belong to you can't you can't do that so just with
that in mind there are a lot of people in this country that have thrown
themselves in with one side or the other but they don't necessarily prescribe to
the ideals and the you know the the crazy fringe beliefs of either side
they're a little bit more in the middle but they've just chosen a side to have
as the title you know to have the R or the D next to their name and these are
the people that you know that can be reasoned with that can be talked to you
can try to make an you can try to get an understanding of their side of things
and how they come about you know which side they're gonna join and things like
that these are the people that empathy is the most important for and these are
the people that you know if you are somebody with a big D next to your name
you really should be reaching out to people with the big R next to their name
much more than you have because when you when you when you sit and you talk with
these people and you try to understand why they feel the way they do and that
means really sitting and listening that doesn't mean sitting and you know
waiting for your chance to rebut whatever they say that's not that's
not the point the point is you you say you know why do you feel this way how
did you arrive at this where where does this come from I'm genuinely curious
and I'd like to understand your thought process and then let them answer just
let them answer and then when they're done you can say okay that's interesting
because I this is how I feel about it and this is how I've arrived at it and
when you have those kind of empathetic discussions where you are truly
genuinely listening to each other and you're trying to find a way not
necessarily to meet in the middle ground but to understand how you've each arrived
at the viewpoints that you have it becomes a lot easier to be empathetic
now what I found and you know the limited amount of research I've done
into this particular part of the the social empathy breaking down due to
politics is that our quickness to retreat to our corners to each individual
corner is is it's not necessarily because we have these like really strong
like personal beliefs that we have actually gone out and done the work and
you know this I have had my hands in the trenches and this is the reasoning that
I came up with usually it's just as simple as this is what was passed down
to us it's a generational thing it's not really about oh I've lived this life and
this is how I've arrived at this conclusion it's more just oh well this
is what my mom and dad thought and they taught me this and I don't want to I
don't want to go further than that it's the same same general concept as a lot
of religion a lot of religion is just handed down from generation to generation
and it takes what people of a certain mindset to start to kind of buck that
trend and they say oh well my parents were this I'm not that and sometimes
you know sometimes they go with a different religion sometimes they just
go against religion not against but you know they have no religion but those
that doesn't happen as often as you would you would think or even as often
as I would necessarily like where each of those people arrive at their decisions
through careful contemplation and you know thought and understanding of how it
affects their life and the lives of those in there and you know in their
family well but what is this all what am I saying here about empathy well
empathy is in every single part of what I just said you know you you are making
decisions based on empathy now some people and we're gonna get into that in
a second and get into this in a second some people don't know if or when or
they even believe that they have experienced empathy there are as I said
before people out there that think of it as kind of a frou frou word that you know
doesn't really mean anything and it's like you know you might as well talk
about you know astrology and gyms and things like that they put it in with
that category of kind of metaphysical stuff and and unfortunately these people
are painfully ignorant of the world and the way things work and if you're one of
these people listening and you're like all empathy doesn't really exist I'm
sorry I'm sorry to offend you I'm sorry to say these things about you but it's
true you are painfully ignorant of the way the world and especially humans work
it really doesn't take much to see that it really doesn't take much to
understand that when you see someone in pain you you can feel their pain you
know when let's put it this way there are always going to be people that see
a child on the street homeless and they not only do they feel bad but they they
do what they can do to help that child whether it be a kid on his own or a kid
with family whatever people see that and they their heart breaks and they need to
help they feel that drive to help and they're always gonna be people that look
at that kid and they say oh that's sad but it's not my problem and then there's
going to be people that don't look at that kid the people from it's not my
problem up they still are showing some form of empathy they understand that it's
sad they understand the the ramifications they understand the tragedy
now how they respond to it that's not necessarily that could be varying levels
of empathy that they're showing but it's not really necessarily tied empathy
that's more the response to what they're feeling but those people that say there
are that don't look at it at all they just continue walking and don't pay it
any mind those are the people that I'm talking about not only do are they are
they so divorced from their emotions and the under understanding of emotion and
the status of others around them but they are actively trying to avoid those
things they don't want to look at it they don't want to see it they don't
want to feel those emotions and those are the people that will slowly over time
start to develop this idea that well these things just don't exist because
they are actively trying to not like them exist and it can be uncomfortable
you know it could be uncomfortable especially to be around those people but
also I imagine to be those people because there takes it there's a certain
level of cognitive dissonance that you have to you have to go through when
you're walking down the street of a city and you see someone suffering and
instead of even you know being a human and looking them in the eye and saying
are you okay or you know have a good day or even you know even stuff like that
but the ability to just completely disregard their existence that's well
that's something I can't relate to and and I hope if you're listening to this
that that's something that you're you can't relate to as well because that is
the exact thing that we're trying to fight that is the exact thing that we're
trying to change because we've spent too much of our lives with the social
empathy levels going down and people getting colder and colder and colder and
sooner or later those people all of us are gonna be the ones that need that
help and it's coming a lot sooner than you think and once again this isn't a
political podcast and I don't want to get into the weeds with this but with
what's going on in the world today the things that are happening the genocides
that we see around us it is more important than ever ever to really reach
down and find your center and what you thought what you believe in and what you
feel is right and use that to guide you as you go through this world and show
empathy and kindness and compassion for those around you because we all need it
right now now we're gonna start talking about some practices and exercises that
we can do or that we all should to be doing to help strengthen our empathy but
before we dive into that I wanted to cap off that little segment that we just did
with another quote because I actually stumbled upon this and like a week ago
and have been holding it because it's it's one of those ones where it just
kind of hit me really hard psychologist Daniel Goldman who has written maybe
books that you may have heard of emotional intelligence and social
intelligence these are pretty well-known books he writes in the social in the
book social intelligence self-absorption in all its forms kills
empathy let alone compassion when we focus on ourselves our world contracts
as our problems and preoccupations loom large but when we focus on others our
world expands our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so they
seem smaller and we increase our capacity for connection or compassionate
action I can't tell you how excited I am to read that quote now I haven't read
that book yet but I will be reading that book to read that quote and it just hits
me as as this this newfound drive that I have to bring positivity and light and
love into the world after having years and years of darkness personal darkness
and this quote really does it really hits home because the whole idea of and
you see it all around you of self-absorption killing empathy just like
I talked about you know on the on the street you see these people walking down
the street and they don't even notice the pain around them they don't notice
the the despair as they're literally waiting through it to get from point A
to point B they don't even notice it and this isn't you know a lot of the times
when I when I use that imagery people will conjure up this idea of like a
businessman in a suit this briefcase but they're not the only ones doing it
there's a lot of you know club goers and things like that they're the walk around
downtown I've known multiple people that work downtown in the city that I'm in
and when they first started working there I knew them as kind caring
compassionate people who would stop and help and you know have a kind of word
but they became so calloused and uncaring by what they were seeing on a
daily basis which to a certain degree is understandable but you know they by two
years later these are people that were literally stepping over homeless people
on the street and say and complaining about them and saying you know why don't
they they're just smelly you know like these are people that did a complete 180
and these are people at one point in time I would have I would have bet money
on that they could you know they were one of the nicest kindest people but they
just that that entire culture of kind of business and working in that kind of
frantic pace and things like that and then when somebody falls over in your
doorstep it's you stop you stop being compassionate after it happens eight
times and you start just saying well this is a pain in the ass I don't know
if I could ever get to that point I would like to think that I can't but I
also find it very sad when you see people that make that turn from
compassion and empathy to cold hard nothing that really that really is a
tragedy and I I mourn for their loss because it's very difficult to get back
to where you started so what can you do how do you get back how do you how do
you make the change to start practicing empathy and start understanding it a
little bit better well now here's here's where we're gonna it's gonna kind of
diverge a little bit in this discussion because I'm gonna talk about two things
at once they do they do matter so there are a lot of psychologists and
neuroscientists and things like that that have begun to adopt the idea that
empathy is not just empathy there are actually three different kinds of
empathy and all of this makes a lot of sense because not everybody processes
empathy the same way and so empathy is an umbrella term and underneath that
we've got cognitive empathy emotional empathy and empathic concern or also
compassion is basically what that would be now I'm gonna use a example that I'm
actually pulling off of a story here because it really is a I can't I
couldn't think of a better one this really does illustrate the difference
between the three types of empathy so imagine that you're you know having
lunch or dinner with a friend and they get a phone call you don't know who
they're talking to you don't hear what's on the other line you're just sitting
there waiting for your friend to get off the phone and all of a sudden your
friend their face changes and they start to cry now some people when their friend
starts to cry they will immediately feel like crying they'll immediately feel
like that sadness that that part that when you immediately start to feel those
emotions that's emotional empathy it's it's emotional empathy is is sharing
emotion vicariously and that's really all that is now some people and I think
I fall I fall somewhere in in between emotional empathy personally this is I
fall between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy because some people
will see the person crying and you'll start to kind of process the not not
necessarily the you know the feeling of the emotion but why are they why are
they like that what can you do to help them how you'll start to there'll be a
more of an intellectual approach to it you'll start to say oh what what are they
feeling why are they feeling it and that's that's cognitive empathy and then
the next part of that is you know this is somebody who's your friend and you
care for and you see them in pain and so you you want to you know grab them by
the hand or hug them or you know wish them wish them better you know all of
these things that is empathic concern that's that's where the the third part
of empathy comes in is is just the the need to reach out and like I said in the
in the kid on the street thing you know the way that would the way that we react
to empathy and our understanding of it is largely determined by which form of
empathy we characterize ourselves with most some people are extremely emotional
impacts some people are cognitive impacts and some people are extremely
compassionate and concerned in paths they and you can be all three obviously
you have varying levels of all three of those but they're it's important to
remember that none of them are better than the other they're just different
they're just different ways of understanding emotion and the emotional
state of others and and taking it in yourself so again what can we do how do
we make how do we make this easier on all of us to express and strengthen our
levels of empathy the first thing that you need to understand and this goes
with pretty much any of these concepts we're going to discuss is if you don't
have it yourself you can't give it to somebody else there's no water in an
empty cup so you you have to be able to show yourself empathy and you have to be
able to be kind and caring and honest with yourself all of these different
concepts we've discussed already and the concepts that we're going to discuss
from this point on and any of the episodes are gonna deal with taking care
of you now we're gonna discuss this in another episode there is a there is a
whole swath of social media and therapy talk that the talks about you know
prioritizing yourself and this and that and none of them none of them are wrong
but we will have an episode in the future about what they call main
character thinking I call it main character syndrome but this this idea
that you are the center of the world we don't want to quite get there you don't
need to get there with your empathy you don't need to be well I'm the only one
that matters because I'm the main character so I'm gonna work on just me
you don't need to quite get there but it is important to show yourself kindness
and love and there's a really great way of doing this or a really great way of
thinking about this think about like take a step for a second and think about
yourself and something that you're really struggling with whether it be a
situation or an emotion whatever it may be think about how it makes you feel
think about the effect that it's having on your life and then when you think
about it once you've got it and you understand it a little bit take a step
back and say okay now let's say your best friend comes to you and they say
I'm having a problem with this and they tell you that their problem is whatever
it is you've you've come to agree on yourself where you've come to realize
with yourself you say okay well how would I how would I advise my friend how
would I help my friend if my friend came to me and said I've got a problem with
seeing myself as beautiful I don't feel good as an example but I don't feel good
about the way I look I don't feel good about the way I feel about myself I'm
having a real problem with that if they came to you and said that how would you
advise them well the interesting thing about this is pretty much across the
board anybody that answers that question is gonna answer it correctly they're
gonna say well I would you know I would give them advice and I would tell them
they're beautiful I would tell them how I think about them I would tell them to
see the world see I wish I could see they could see themselves the way I see
them and I would tell them you know they would have they would have all these
things that they could tell them and I'm sure that some of them would would help
their friend help the friend understand their value help their friend understand
that they are beautiful inside and out. And that's great that you can do that.
The problem is that that's where it stops for most people because even though
you can take a moment to diagnose the problem for yourself and then put it
into this hypothetical, most of us don't have the ability to tell ourselves those
same things. The advice that you would give to the imaginary friend in this
hypothetical is the same advice you should be giving yourself, but most of us
don't give ourselves that much grace. So we tell our friend, oh no, you're good.
Oh no, you are beautiful. You are wonderful. I know that you don't feel it,
but you are and the world sees it and we understand your value and we
understand how important you are. And all of these things that you would
build your friend up with, most of us never say that to ourselves. Most of us
never have those same kind words and those same moments of true self
appreciation. You have to be empathetic towards yourself. You have to be
understanding of yourself to really be able to pass that on to others and be
able to flex that muscle for others. Be kind and compassionate to yourself. And
before we continue, the next episode of a Pebble in a Fun podcast will be about
self-care and self-love and how we can really understand how important that is.
And I have a letter that someone wrote me that I'm gonna go ahead and
read and it should be, I think that is very eye-opening and moving and it'll be
a, we'll talk about it, we'll discuss it a little bit. So that's the next
episode. I just thought I'd piggyback off that first thing since it kind of
tied in. So where do we get the energy to continue to practice
these things? Where do we, how do we continue to, you know, power ourselves as
we're depleting our empathy for others? Well, one of the things that they have
found, researchers have found, is that when you show kindness to others, you
actually become more powerful. You actually get more energy. So if you're
if you're trying to find the energy or find the focus to be empathetic towards
others, one thing that you can do to start is just being kind to others. You
don't have to necessarily understand their emotion, you don't have to
understand their point of view, you don't have to know where they're coming from,
but if you're just kind to others, if you, you know, send a, say a nice thing to
somebody, send a supportive text to somebody who you know is, you know,
having some trouble. If you help somebody across the street or, you know, carry
groceries for somebody, all of these things are things, little tiny kindnesses
that you can do that not only will they profoundly impact the person in that
moment, but they, being that kind and being that helping will give you energy.
It will give you the strength you need to keep going. And I promise you, if you
haven't done any of these things, that it will change your life. You will start to
see the world in a different way once you start exercising these kindness
muscles and once you, once you get to that point where you can, you know, you
kind of habitually want to help people, the next step is really understanding,
understanding the people and you know, how they got there and why they're
there and being able to empathize with their pain so that you can better and
more effectively help them get rid of it. But it starts with, it starts with being
kind and helping people. You don't have to necessarily understand them, but you
need to help them. Understanding can come later and that's where the empathy
comes in. So to get to empathy, use kindness. This next part is, is the next
idea is one we've somewhat already discussed, but I want to bring it up here
because it is a genuinely good exercise and that is try to reach out to more
people that you disagree with. People that are, you know, maybe on the other
side of the political aisle, maybe, maybe they just have a different sports team
that they like, whatever it may be, try to, try to reach out to people that you
disagree with and talk to them. And when I say talk to them, I mean, it's okay to
disagree with their stance. It's okay to disagree with what they're, with their,
you know, where they are with their beliefs, but you don't need to debate
them. You can have a conversation. You can take a few moments to, you know, be
patient, keep your ears open and your mind open and just listen, just listen to
what they have to say. And then hopefully they'll listen to what you have to say.
And then you can, you know, you go back and forth like that and you have a real
conversation where both sides have the ability to express themselves. And what
you'll find in doing that is that it opens up, it opens up your ability to be
empathetic towards others because you're able to kind of bring in and
understand these different mindsets and these different ideas and the places
where people are coming from. Now, there are a lot of people out there, once again,
that have kind of resigned themselves to, I'm not going to talk to these people. I
don't understand these people. I'm not going to deal with these people. Well,
that's, that's, that's the whole problem, right? Like that's, that's counter
intuitive to understanding empathy. The whole idea is to understand where people
come from, to understand how they arrive at these feelings, where these feelings
that, you know, arrive in them from. And if you don't understand it, then you
can't, you'll never be able to bridge that gap. So under, it has to start with
empathy and understanding. You have to try to bridge that gap. And the only way
to do that is through conversation, not debate, not argument. It has to be
through conversation. You have to start to understand where they're coming from.
Now this next, this next part isn't going to be, not controversial, but people
aren't going to want to hear it. One of the biggest gaps and reasons for social
empathy to decline is technology. And I mean, it's almost a meme now where people
have their phones in front of them. You know, you'll see pictures of it all over
and things like that. What, what's important to understand is that when we
are out in the world or we're just sitting in our car or whatever we, whatever
we're doing, and we have our phone in our face, we're just sitting there looking at
it. We essentially are pulling ourselves out of the equation, right? Like you're
not looking at other people. You're not, you're not focusing on anyone else
around you. You're just looking at your phone. This is a massive inhibitor for
social empathy. This is one of the things that, it's not a mistake. And any, any
scientists will tell you this, any psychologists will tell you this. It's not a mistake that
as more cell phones got out, more people were using their phones the way they are,
and that the social empathy levels in society declined. That is not a mistake.
That is, that is, that is an easy cause and effect because you don't have to
look around you. You can divorce yourself from the world around you by just
staring at your phone. So what you want to do, and like I said, this isn't going to
be popular, but what you want to do is just for a couple of days, when you, when
you use your phone, wherever the situation may be, take a second, a minute
after you use your phone and self-reflect. Kind of ask yourself some
basic questions like how does this make me feel? What am I thinking? What, what
have I actually done in this time? And for a lot of us, just sitting on your
phone scrolling through whatever social media and things like that is, is
literally just the mindless escape that we use to pass the time. The problem is,
is that in doing that, we are essentially being a net negative or a net zero to
ourselves. We're not actually gaining anything. And for most people, sooner or
later, it does end up being a complete net negative because you'll get on your
phone, you'll see something, especially if you know, you're, you're looking at
current events or you're involved in understanding politics and things like
that, you'll see something and it will make you angry. It will actively decrease
your mood and make you upset. So when you, when you get off your phone,
whatever you're doing, the social media thing, if you're on your phone, let's
say if you're on your phone for more than 30 minutes, take a second and think
about what happened there. Like obviously you picked up your phone to look at
Tik Tok or Instagram or whatever. And now 30 minutes have gone by an hour has
gone by. Now what is, what has happened there? Have you learned anything? Have
you gained any emotional, you know, have you, have you gotten better emotionally?
Have you completely disregarded all of the people around you, uh, while you
wandered with your phone in your hand? And how do you feel about all that?
How do you feel about the time that you've just spent doing that? Now, this
is not me saying, oh, you need to move away from your phones and all this.
That's not, I'm not preaching about phone use. What I'm saying is that it
is important to understand that, especially on social media, there is a
large echo chamber, which I'm sure everybody understands what that is now.
Um, there's large echo chambers that have formed all over the place and we'll
get in there and we'll, we'll have the best intentions and we'll just be doing
this to pass the time or whatever. And then we'll come out negative. We'll come
out hurting. We'll come out, uh, and this is, we'll come out angry. Well, angry
is a, is a big problem. This is not to say that there can't be anything positive
that comes from social media. I'm not, I have, I have very strong opinions about
social media dating back to when it first started to come around. Um, but
let's just say that it's, uh, it is a true double edged sword and one that I
think we are, uh, in the process of impaling ourselves on. So if you're going
to be on your phone, do so, uh, consciously don't don't it's the, we
don't want it to be an unconscious habit that you just do. Um, try to try to
regain control of yourself in terms of those, those habits. Now this is not
doing these things are, that's not going to increase your empathy, but not being
on your phone, uh, gives you the opportunity, not, not wasting a bunch of
time, making yourself angry, looking at social media, um, is, is going to give
you more time. It's going to, it's going to increase your ability for human
connection. It's going to, you know, instead of being on your phone while
you're at the grocery store, walking up and down the aisles with, you know,
whoever you're with, um, you, you instead can nod and smile and interact and, you
know, be there with the person that you're there with shopping. Uh, all of
these things are important. And let me, let me state that again, uh, be there
with the person is a really important idea because one of the things that,
I know, uh, and I'm sure that most people listen to this know from personal
experience is that phones truly do inhibit, uh, personal interaction with
the people that you care about. Uh, we just recently had Thanksgiving and
there was a point in time when, uh, a few of us were sitting on the couch and all
of us were on our phone. And my mom was sitting there and she said, you, you
were, everybody just pulled out their phone. They're all, you're all on your
phone. Now I was, you know, this is not to defend myself, but I was, you know,
but I said at the time I was actually posting a tick tock, uh, at the time.
So I, I, I've been doing that, uh, you know, to get this message out. So to me,
I felt like I was doing something important, but her point is not, not
wrong. And it's not lost on me that, um, you know, it's to be sitting there as a
family at Thanksgiving, uh, and everybody's on their phones a day when
we're supposed to be thankful for each other and, you know, connecting with
each other, uh, is not a good look. And it's important to remember that, that,
you know, when you, when you're sitting there, you know, you're in the kitchen
with your significant other and you're trying to do something and they're just
on their phone. You're trying to talk to them and they're just on their phone.
You're trying to have a moment with them and they're just on their phone. It can,
it can really hurt you. And so it's important for each of us take ownership
of that and move past technology as an inhibitor and start using it, uh, to
engage with people and, you know, understand that the time that you're using,
the time that you're kind of throwing away the time that you're killing, as the
phrase goes, uh, is time that you could instead be using to help yourself and
others and make this world a better place. Now I've overshot here, so we're
going to get to this last one. Um, and then we're going to wrap it up really
fast. Um,
and I think, I think that this is the reason why I want to make sure I get this
in is I think this is really one of the most important things that you can do.
And that is as you get better at understanding these empathic feelings and
you get better at, uh, kind of flexing the muscle, you're going to start to
notice more when other people are empathic, when other people are doing
things that are empathic. And a lot of times you'll in the, in the past, or
before you start to make these realizations, you may have, you know,
just looked at it and thought, oh, that's cool. We've got to get past that.
We have to start praising people for their empathy. We need to start seeing
these actions and decisions that people are making based on empathy. And we
need to praise that. We need to make sure that we call it out and we say,
Hey, that was really cool that you were able to, you know, identify this,
whatever emotional state and react to it and help somebody like really make
sure that you're reinforcing, not just yourself, but the people around you.
Um, when they're, when they're practicing empathy, um, the more you see
it, the more you will see it, the more you call it out, the more you're
going to feel it yourself. And when you go up to somebody and you say, Hey,
that was really good what you did for to help that person, you'll find yourself
wanting to do it more too. It kind of snowballs in that, in that sense, where
you know, when you, when you recognize something, uh, you see it more, just
just think about it like this. This is something that is almost universal for
people. You go out to buy a new car or you, your family has a car and you, you
know, I'm, I don't, I'm not gonna, I can't think of a car off the top of my head,
but, uh, let's say they have blank car and then they sell it. Well, you've
spent X number of years in, in this car. Well, now from that point on, I promise
you that you're going to notice that car. The same thing goes for if you go out
and you buy a new car and you think, Oh, this is a really cool car. I haven't
seen this car a lot on the streets. As soon as you get in that car, you're
going to see that car everywhere because now it's in your mind. Now, now
you're, you're, you're actively thinking about it all the time. The same thing
goes for people and traits in people. If you are walking down the street and you
see somebody that you find very attractive, you're going to start to
notice those traits in other people that, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe you
really liked the way somebody's hair was cut and you were very attracted to that.
Well, from that point on, you're going to start to look for that hairstyle. That
was the person you saw on the street. You're never going to have any interaction
with them again, but if you can find, you know, or maybe you, maybe you mentioned
to your significant other, Oh, this would look really good. Maybe, and you
know, not all those things are fair. Not all those things are right, but I'm just
saying you start to look for those things that you find attractive. You start
to look for those things that are in your mind. The same thing goes with empathy.
If you start to focus on it and you start to understand it, you start to look
for it. And when you find it, praise it and encourage it, reinforce it. And
people will do the same for you. And that's how we really get this ball
rolling in a, in a really, really strong and positive way. Okay. So we're going to
go ahead and start to wrap it up because we've overshot by quite a bit here, but
this is a topic, like I said at the start, that is just, there's just too much
to get to and it's just too difficult to kind of boil it down. I wanted to go
into this episode. Originally I went in with the idea of being able to just drop
a bunch of knowledge on everybody. And as I started to uncover more and more
and more about the topics and understand, I knew, I realized that if I tried to do
that, this would first of all sound like stereo instructions and it just, I
wouldn't get to it all. So I thought instead we would just go through and have
a quick conversation about all of these different things we talked about. And
hopefully some of these things sparked your interest and made you understand
just how deep and wide this field is and how important empathy is just in general.
The other two topics we've discussed, honesty and kindness. Honesty is a, you
know, an age-old idea that is, you know, literally ingrained in our DNA. So
that's something that has been studied and studied and studied, but
it's just such a simple concept that there's really not much that needs to be
discussed there. Kindness, as I said in that episode, is something that
really hasn't been studied, nowhere near as much as it should have been. Well,
empathy is extremely well studied and it has, the understanding of it is one
that has shifted over the years and we do have a better understanding that it
is not something that you are born with. It is something that you, you know, you
acquire it through your early years, but then it's something that you
practice and you get stronger at. And if you don't practice it and you don't get
stronger with it, it will atrophy. If you do not practice empathy, it will atrophy
and you will get to the point where you don't have that ability any longer. And
then it becomes very, very, very difficult to get it back. You can, you can get it
back. So don't think I'm trying to tell you just to give up, but it does become
very difficult and all of these things that I mentioned here can help you kind
of get it back. So as per usual, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this, this
episode up with a quote and I know that, I know that a lot of people are going to
hear me say this and they're going to think that I'm just being ridiculous, but
I just think that it's, it's a funny quote. Steve Martin, and for my money one
of the greatest comedians of all time, said, before you criticize a man, walk a
mile in his shoes. That way when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and
you'll have his shoes. Y'all take care. We'll see you for the next episode. It
will be about self-love and self-care. Have a good week. Take care of yourself
and take care of others.