Activities to increase empathy (part 2)

Deepening Empathic Practice

Continuing with our training, we'll explore another set of activities that will help us further refine our empathic capacity, focusing on curiosity, feedback, and observation.

Developing Genuine Interest in Others

Often in conversations, we wait for our turn to speak instead of truly listening.

The challenge here is to develop genuine curiosity.

Choose one person you interact with regularly but know little about, and make it your mission to learn more about them.

Ask open-ended questions about their interests, their experiences, their family.

Listen to their answers with the intention of understanding, not judging or preparing your next line.

This act of genuine interest makes the other person feel valued and is one of the fastest ways to build a connection.

Ask for feedback on your actions and behaviors

This is a brave but immensely useful activity.

Ask a trusted person (a friend, a family member, a colleague) to give you honest feedback about how they perceived you in a recent interaction.

For example: "How did you feel during our conversation yesterday?"

The key is to receive this information without becoming defensive.

Remember that the other person's perception is their reality, and it gives us invaluable insight into our "blind spot" - how our behavior is received by others, allowing us to adjust it to be more effective.

Becoming a "people watcher"

Spend some time each week simply sitting in a public place, like a plaza or a cafe, and people-watching.

Pay attention to their body language, their facial expressions, the tone of their conversations (without being indiscreet).

Try to guess what emotions they're feeling or what kind of relationship they have.

This is excellent training to calibrate your ability to read nonverbal cues, an essential skill for empathy.

Reading autobiographies (especially those of people you don't like)

Reading is a powerful way to get inside another person's mind and heart.

Reading autobiographies allows you to see the world through another person's eyes.

An even greater challenge, and a very powerful exercise in empathy, is to read the biography of someone you don't like or with whom you profoundly disagree.

Try to understand their perspective, their motivations, the experiences that led them to who they are.

This exercise can dramatically expand your ability to understand points of view different from your own.