“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.”
~ Meryl Streep ~

From the boardroom to the classroom, empathy is a word we are hearing more and more about these days.  While at one time we assumed that humans were basically self-interested creatures that had to be taught to get along with each other. Researchers, such as biologist Frans de Waal, are finding that like our primitive ancestors, we are social creatures that have naturally evolved to take care of each other. While psychologists have shown us that up until we are two years of age is a critical time for us to learn empathy, we also know that we can increase it throughout our lifetime.  There is perhaps no other attribute that is more vital to develop relationships with others than empathy.

Here are 5 ways we can increase empathy:

Becoming an active listener

Empathy requires that we cultivate the trait of active listening.  Most people are thinking how they are going to respond while the other person is still speaking.  Active listening means being totally focused on what the other person is saying. To practice this, pretend that your job is to only focus on what the person has to say and accurately feed back to them what they have just said. A bonus, if you do your job really well, is to be able to receive additional information and have the person to go deeper than they normally would have without your feedback.  As your active listening skills increase, you will find people drawn to you and opening up to you more.

Challenge prejudices and stereotypes

We know that in order to learn and grow we need to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. One way to do this is to make an effort to know people that are different from us.  Find someone who you are somewhat uncomfortable around because they are different than yourself and make a genuine attempt to get to know them. See how many things you can find that you have in common. Find common struggles that you both share. Attend events where the gathering is different from the crowd that you normally hang out with.  Find out why they believe and think the way they do.

Develop a curiosity about others and push your comfort zone

Have you ever wondered about the homeless person panhandling across the street from where you work? Have you asked yourself how he became homeless, if he has family, friends and how he views the world?  What about the person who cleans your office? Ever wondered what their dreams, goals and aspirations are? Many people are curious but few take the time, or step out of their comfort zone to ask.  Challenge yourself to slowly find out more about these people. You may be quite surprised by what you find out.

Spend some time in another’s shoes

George Orwell worked as a colonial policeman in Burma when he decided to find out what it was like to live as a beggar and vagabond. He dressed like a tramp and lived on the streets of London with the rest of the homeless. For Orwell it was a life changing experience, providing him with great literary material and a fresh perspective on living. He considered this to be the most valuable experience of his life.  Recently New York Yankees General Manager, Brian Cashman and 225 other people, volunteered to sleep on the streets of Manhattan in potentially freezing temperatures to raise awareness of the plight of homeless children.  There are other opportunities to experience how people live, such as spending a month surviving off what someone receives on welfare. Another way is to spend time volunteering with those who are marginalized and we know little about.

Share yourself with others

The best way to gain trust and have others open up to you, is to share some of your feelings with them.  I am not talking about being the person who shares their whole life story within five minutes of meeting you. What I mean is sharing some of your fears as well as your joys and aspirations.  By doing so, you will give others permission to share more of themselves, allowing for deeper conversation.  By showing some vulnerability you will come across as more human with all of the joys, sorrows and struggles that all of us share.

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The circle of life is never-ending. Edgar Cayce considered that “no soul incarnates without having a general plan for the life to be experienced. The personality a person expresses in life is only one of the many personalities (i.e., facets of the soul) a person can express.”

But where was your soul origin? Let’s play a little game (for entertainment purposes only).

Take just now this easy quiz and find out the origin of your soul!

What Is The Origin Of Your Soul?

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We are all blessed to have long, prosperous lives, despite whoever wants to say “life’s too short”. We all get to grow, experience, change, succeed and fail.

It’s too bad then that so many people put so much weight on the latter two – success and failure, as a way to validate whether the life they are living is worthy or not. When we are young we put pressure on ourselves to get good grades in school and make our parents happy. This continues into adulthood when some of us have very strict parents that demand high GPA’s; the constant cycle of overachievement and high demands becomes too much for some to bear. We develop stress and start alienating ourselves and others.

It’s safe to say that most people try to define most of their lives with their achievements. They’ve done this or that, made this or that much money, acquired this many things, saw these monuments. When we look back on our lives, we recall special moments in our life by when we achieved certain targets – graduation, marriage, acquisition, etc.

But what happens when we haven’t achieved so many things, or our progression seems to taper off. You’ve got the job, had plenty of memorable vacations, saved up so much money. You’re only in your early thirties – certainly there is more to be done?

Your friends have taken it to the next level – they’ve found ways to continue achieving things, through their work lives, family lives, hobbies, all the meanwhile making you feel like you have been stagnating. Your self esteem wavers and every day you start doing something dangerous – reflecting on your life and evaluating yourself based on your achievements.

You all know what a bucket list it, and maybe you have one as well. A big list of things we need to do, we need to achieve, to make us feel like we’ve had a successful life. For many of us, our hypothetical bucket list defines us. We make bold decisions in order to reach our milestones and sometimes put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do it.

Therein lies the problem. All this pressure we put on ourselves, this pressure we create in order for us to live up to the expectations we give to ourselves. We don’t need it. We don’t need to do it.

We base our worth and merit on how many milestones we’ve reached when we know at the heart of it that we don’t have to. That it is a consequence of overexcitement. We define our self worth after years of chasing achievements and accomplishments, despite how unhealthy it is, when, at the truth of it, we don’t need to do anything like that to value ourselves.

We only need what we have inside. Instead of evaluating your life based on corporate achievements and photographic evidence, focus instead on finding your value through your best characteristics.

Find your value within

Your value is much deeper than your accomplishments in life. Your value comes from within. Instead of thinking about pen and paper, refocus your eye to inside you. Find instead how you should portray value, but how others see value in you. Focus on your charismatic personality, your sense of humour, your friends, your loved ones. See what they see inside of you. Write down your best qualities and realize that your value in life is not dependent on your mantelpiece but on the good of your heart and soul.

What is success?

If you can find the beauty within you, then you can start to redefine your idea of what success really is. You can see all your friends enjoying their successes through social media, but look deeper than the surface and you will see that it’s not all about the cars and money.

The ultimate success is to simply, have a happy life. Be able to do what you love to do everyday, be humble, and be proud of it. Endorsing your inner strengths, your personal qualities, and being able to live each day with a smile is the most successful thing a person could do. Everything else is just decoration.

Don’t force yourself to spend your life chasing accomplishments. Be happy with what you have inside and feel the accomplishment that simply being a happy and balanced person brings. It will be your greatest success to date.

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Finish what you start. That is a quote we hear from our parents. They say it’s the reason the successful are successful and you will fail if you quit. Except that sometimes, quitting is a good move.

While successful people aren’t quitters, it’s also true they don’t finish everything they start.

Why it’s important to finish.

Finishing anything you start is important to success. Quitting when the times get tough won’t make you successful. If making an impact is a goal, persistence is key.

So unless you want people to forget you, finishing is important for success. I mean, what if Steve Jobs gave up on building Apple? What if Thomas Edison gave up on his 9999th try? What if Einstein said to himself “I’m stupid. I’ll never do anything world-changing”?

The secret to these people’s success is grit, hard work, and perseverance. These are the values you will need on the tough road to success.

But sometimes, quitting is a good move.

Why it’s sometimes ok to quit.

Look, sometimes, quitting is vital for focus. You can’t finish everything you start. Sacrifice for the sake of the important.

Economics tells us gaining something will always come at a price. In other words, an “opportunity cost”.

A.k.a., you sometimes have to quit to make another one succeed.

For example, what if your startup isn’t working? You’ve hired the best people but it still isn’t working? Is it worth to continue? Of course not.

You already sacrificed a lot. Why should you continue?

And what if you want to lose weight and you grab a whole box of cookies from the table? Now you’re more conscious, should you still eat the whole box of cookies? Of course not.

Quitting is a good move for many reasons. So if something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to quit.

Famous people who quit to success.

Believe it or not, some people wouldn’t be where they are if they didn’t quit. Here are three people:

Bill Gates. – We all know that Bill Gates’ net worth is a whopping $ 78.6 billion dollars. But he wouldn’t be able to make Microsoft without dropping out of Harvard first.

Henry Ford. – Henry Ford’s first startup failed before he revolutionized the world. No one bought his expensive and unreliable first car model. He eventually called it quits in 1901 and started all over again to found the Ford Motor Company.

Kanye West. – Kanye West is another dropout but unlike Gates, Kanye West didn’t drop out to pursue entrepreneurship. He did it to pursue his passion – music. And guess what? It became a huge success for him.

Famous people who grit their way to success

While there are people who quit to become successful, there are also people who persevered to be successful.

Steve Jobs. – Imagine being fired from a company you founded. That happened to Mr. Jobs. In 1997, he regained the CEO position and made it one of the most innovate companies in history.

Thomas Edison. – Although he didn’t fail 10,000 times, the fact he had almost 2,000 patents for different inventions shows his passion for changing the world.

Abraham Lincoln. – Lost his job in 1831, business failed in 1833, wife died in 1835, defeated in the run for Vice President in 1856… These are just a few failures of one of the most influential presidents in American History.

When to quit and when to go on

Just because it’s ok to quit doesn’t mean you should do it whenever the hard times come. Ask three basic questions to know whether going on is still worth it.

Do you love what you’re doing?

Is the reward you’ll have will soothe the pain you experienced to get it?

Did your mentor, close friends, and family tell you to stop?

If you answered no to the first two questions and yes to the third, then you should quit. Not every goal in life has to be fulfilled nor does every beginning have to end.

An example of a scenario you should quit is a toxic relationship. While relationships are healthy, there are relationships which pull you down. Quitting these is a good decision.

How to finish what you have started

If a goal is worth pursuing, it’s a good decision to continue. But doing it is difficult am I right? So here are some tips to finish what you’ve started:

Shower yourself with positivity. – Though being too optimistic can derail you from achieving your goals, it still helps to be an optimist. In fact, Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, says our brains perform the best when they are positive. And you don’t even need to be fully positive to gain the benefits of optimism.

In a study, a team of researchers grouped doctors into 3. They made one group happy, while the other two were made to be neutral. The results of the study then surprised the researchers. Positive doctors made the right diagnosis 20% faster and exhibited much more creativity than the neutral doctors!

The most surprising part of the study though is the researchers primed them to be happy with … (wait for it) candy! This shows how even the slightest positivity can give you a big edge. So go. Listen to your favorite music or do a hobby. It might be in fact what will make you reach the goal.

Make it into a game. – Gaming gets a bad rap from society. But studies have shown how effective gamification is to your goals.
Fact: Your brain releases dopamine whenever you get a reward. And this article shows the relationship of Motivation and Dopamine. And since the game of life has trophies, getting those releases dopamine which in turn increases your motivation.

Another reason gamification is effective is that gaming requires intrinsic motivation. Unlike extrinsic motivation which requires outside factors, when you’re intrinsically motivated, you do something purely because you want to. No other reason. This in itself helps you achieve your goals faster.

Forgive yourself. – If you flunked, don’t be harsh on yourself. Forgive yourself for being a human and move on.
One thing you don’t want to pass by with is the “What the Hell” Effect. To explain this effect, let’s say you have a goal to watch only 3 episodes of “The Walking Dead” every day. You have a 2-day streak but on the third day, you didn’t notice you’re in your fourth episode already. You realized it halfway through the episode. So what do you think you’ll do? Turn the TV off? Nope. You will say, “What the hell? I already flunked so might as well enjoy it.” Weird but true.

So if this is true and this happens to us all, how do you avoid this? Make yourself guilty? No! Forgive yourself! You might think that being harsh and feeling guilty will make you revert to your resolution. This isn’t true.

As an experiment, Mark Leary, and Claire Adams invited women who want to lose weight to eat doughnuts. They told half of them that everyone indulges sometimes and forgive themselves while they told nothing to the other half. After they finished eating the donuts, they’ve given the 2 groups a bowl full of candies. Those who were harsh on themselves ate almost 70 grams but those who forgave themselves only ate 28 grams. It seems like forgiving yourself does wonders to achieving your goal.

How to quit

While most of the time, continuing is the better choice, we learned quitting makes more sense sometimes. If your non-profit isn’t working, your startup is in a doomed niche, or if you have a toxic relationship, quitting is a great choice.

But leave the lessons intact though when you quit. Quitting something needs to leave a lesson which will make you smarter.

Reflect. – Why did you quit your startup? What happened that your relationship became painful? There is always a reason. Find it. Then, make sure to avoid the same mistake next time.

Try once more. – Sometimes, trying another time is worth it. But don’t repeat the same mistakes you did before. Do it smarter so you won’t have to repeat the same mishaps.

Conclusion

Learning when to quit and when to stay is a key to success. You can’t finish everything and you can’t quit everything too. Both must be in a constant balance for your life to be successful.

What are things in your life you feel you should quit on now? How about things you think you should continue on?

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Every one of us is special, after all we are unique. But what differentiate you from another? Have you ever thought about that?

It could be your sense of duty, or your ability to make everybody around you smile. Or is it maybe your compassionate nature? There is only one way to discover your uniqueness!

Take jut now this quick, easy and fun quiz and find out what makes you special!

What Makes You Special?

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Yesterday we were discovering what kind of angel are you. Today is all about your guardian angel. After all, everybody needs somebody, especially in dire times.

For sure, no matter if we are believers or not, we can think about one moment when things were solved as by divine intervention.

So, take this quiz and find out who is your guardian angel!

Who Is Your Guardian Angel?

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