After starting four companies and dealing with a lot of stakeholders from employees, partners, investors and clients, recently I came to realize that my strength of strong empathy, is also my point of weakness.

I smiled reading your whole article knowing how genius it is and how awkward and hard to understand it will be for most people because it’s such a rare trait to have. One that is hard to develop and is of such luck to have as a gift.

A year ago, I started to hate myself for being so honest and empathetic with others. The pain of treason, being fooled or taken for granted is very deep. And all is rooted because my empathy for others outgrew my self interest. My sense of accomplishment was now only satisfied when fed with the love, respect and loyalty of others. All of which I got none when things went south.

But then I started to think since this is a gift I should be grateful. I should learn to control it. And to protect it, I should work on developing what I am missing. Skills like argumentconfrontation, negotiation and traits like being shrewd and tough when needed.

I learnt to be self-empathetic first before having empathy for others. Otherwise, I seek to be like Ghandi which is cute but not realistic.

Reading your article made me realize I am on the right track…