Empathy Entries

No excuses

How will you show empathy today?

Empathy is a skill that can be learned. It’s not an innate talent or a stroke of luck. It’s developed over hundreds of everyday opportunities — interactions with strangers, conversations with friends and family, meetings at…

Hide and… hate?

Why it’s easier not to seek

Hate is a rampant emotion in our country right now. It might be towards a political party, a religious group, people of color, the LGTBQ community, women’s rights advocates, or someone else.

Curiosity: vice or virtue?

How my perspective of curiosity has changed

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

Whether from this proverb or another internalized story, somewhere between childhood and adolescence I began to act as if…

The curse of comparison

Why acknowledging pain (without comparison) matters

No one likes pain. It’s completely natural to want to avoid it, make it better, or not talk about it.

Write it out

How writing helps us empathize

Writing is for everyone. Not because everyone will write a book or become a journalist, but because writing helps us articulate what we think. It provides clarity and perspective as we hold our thoughts at arms length.

Keep trying

A reminder as we do hard things

Showing empathy is hard. Assuming good intent is hard. Seeking connection before seeking change is hard. Staying curious is hard.

“But it’s not my job!”

Going first when it doesn’t seem fair

“Why should I reach out first? It wasn’t my fault.”

“Why should I care? It’s not my job.”

3 steps from hostility to empathy

How to create safe spaces for empathetic conversations

Empathy is one of the best tools we can use when we’re in a hostile conversation. In these often emotionally charged scenarios, creating a ‘safe space’ is…

Is it personal?

What a daily practice of empathy looks like

Empathy must be cultivated over time. Thankfully, we all have dozens of opportunities to practice every single day when…

Life as we know it… or portray it?

The courage to be real

I don’t think it’s ever been easier to pretend or portray an alternate life than what we’re currently living. Social media in particular allows us to show only the magical, the glamorous, the ideal, or…

Got humility?

Why we need it and what it looks like

Empathy is hard. Really, really hard.

One reason it’s so difficult to step into someone else’s shoes and see life from their perspective is because that requires humility.