Quotes About Empathy

Understanding a person's hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you'll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.

In this situation, your success hinges entirely on talking the person up from reptile to mammal to human brain

happiness is actually more closely tied to how you perceive and emotionally react to the events and people around you. That's because people who perceive the world as positive or negative will react to it positively or negatively.

If someone can't or won't listen to you, get him to listen to himself.

Questioning works better than telling. That's why Will didn't tell Evan, "Don't let your friends get you into trouble." Instead, he asked questions that made Evan think, "Who's likely to get into trouble, and what should I do if it happens?" In other words, Will didn't talk down to Evan, or talk at him. Instead, the two talked side by side emotionally as well as physically.

Empathy is a sensory experience; that is, it activates the sensory part of your nervous system, including the mirror neurons we've talked about. Anger, on the other hand, is a motor action—usually a reaction to some perceived hurt or injury by another person. So by taking people out of anger and shifting them into an empathic behavior, the Empathy Jolt moves them from the motor brain to the sensory brain.

anger and empathy—like matter and antimatter—can't exist in the same place at the same time. Let one in, and you have to let the other one go. So when you shift a blamer into empathy, you stop the person's angry ranting dead in its tracks.

If you want to have an interesting dinner conversation, be interested. If you want to have interesting things to write, be interested. If you want to meet interesting people, be interested in the people you meet—their lives, their history, their story. Where are they from? How did they get here? What have they learned? By practicing the art of being interested, the majority of people can become fascinating teachers; nearly everyone has an interesting story to tell.

Making someone "feel felt" simply means putting yourself in the other person's shoes. When you succeed, you can change the dynamics of a relationship in a heartbeat. At that instant, instead of trying to get the better of each other, you "get" each other and that breakthrough can lead to cooperation, collaboration, and effective communication.

we're finding that humans, just like macaques, have neurons that act as mirrors. In fact, studies suggest that these remarkable cells may form the basis for human empathy. That's because, in effect, they transport us into another person's mind, briefly making us feel what the person is feeling.

When people go on the attack it's usually because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they've been treated poorly. That's especially true if you're dealing with angry and frustrated customers. Often such people feel hurt in many areas of life but save their "road rage" for outbursts that they believe won't get them fired, divorced, or arrested—like kicking the dog or yelling at you.

Becoming defensive or counterattacking simply reinforces the idea that you think these people are wrong and unimportant (and stupid), which amplifies their mirror neuron gap and fuels their fire. When you make a counterintuitive move and encourage them to talk, you do the opposite: You mirror respect and interest, and they feel compelled to send the same message back.

Move a person from hostility to mild confusion and already you've moved one step in the right direction.

you will deal, every day, with people who have "mirror neuron gaps" because the world isn't giving back to them what they're putting out. (My guess, in fact, is that this is a nearly universal condition of humankind.) Understanding a person's hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you'll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.

It is not a guilt tripping, it is empathy training

An ounce of apology is worth a pound of resentment

1. Recognize that the person you're dealing with isn't able to think rationally in the current situation.

3. Realize that the crazy behavior isn't about you. Instead, it's all about the person you're dealing with.

The measure of self-assurance is how deeply and sincerely interested you are in others. The measure of insecurity is how much you try to impress them with you.

4. Talk with the irrational person, leaning into his crazy by entering his world calmly and with intention.

Why is stipulation a smart technique? Because when people already know (or will quickly find out) the problem that you're admitting to, your best move is to get it out of the way. Even better, you can often transform that problem into a powerful asset.

The key fact to know when somebody goes nuclear is that the person is stuck in attack mode, so rational, reasonable, intelligent conversation won't work. A guy who's throwing a computer at the boss or waving a gun around can't listen to reason, because he can't access the higher thought processes that say "Hey, calm down—this is crazy.

5. Show the person that you are an ally rather than a threat by listening calmly and empathetically as he vents.

Your task, if you're facing a person who's running amok, is to break that lock. How? By talking the person up gradually from "I want to hurt someone" to "I'm terribly upset" to "I need to find a smart way to handle this." These stages correlate with the three levels of the brain: the primitive reptile brain, the emotional mammal brain, and the logical human brain.