Quotes About Empathy

When you verbally appreciate people who are criticizing you, you're letting go of the need to defend, explain, or justify your behavior. You

Perhaps you've heard the proverb, "Give people a fish and they eat for a day, but teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime." Well, it is also true that "you can lead people to water, but you can't make them fish.

The next time a spouse or friend says something in an attacking manner, rather than defend against the attack, blend with the intent by saying, "I appreciate that you care about me, and I want to clear the air between us." There's a real possibility that the person will stop in his or her tracks and calm down and that real communication will ensue.

Another intent behind behavior is to get along with people. This is necessary if you want to create and develop relationships. When there are people with whom you want to get along, you may be less assertive as you put their needs above your own. If getting along is your top priority and people ask where you would like to go for lunch, you might respond, "Where would you like to go?

person in the get along mode will be considerate of the opinions and feelings of others.

Conflict occurs when the emphasis in a relationship is on the differences between people. The more divided you seem to be, the sooner you fall.

You get along better with people when the emphasis is on similarities between you. The difference between conflict with a friend and conflict with a difficult person is that with a friend the conflict is tempered by the common ground you share. Success in communication depends on finding common ground before attempting to redirect the interaction toward a new outcome. Obviously, reducing differences is essential to your success in dealing with people you can't stand.

speed. And you blend conceptually with your words. But as natural as it is to blend with people that you like or with people that you share an objective with, it is equally natural not to blend with people whom you perceive as difficult. And the failure to blend has serious consequences because without blending, the differences between you become the basis for conflict.

One way to take charge with difficult people in a poisoned atmosphere is to purposely blend with their body posture, facial expressions, and degree of animation. Blending sends the signal that "I'm with you! I'm not the enemy! I'm interested in what you say and do!

If you fail to blend with other people's voice volume and speed, you will probably end up talking to yourself or dealing with serious misunderstanding.

For this reason, masterful communicators make it their goal to listen and understand first, before attempting to be heard and understood.

In fact, there can be no doubt that when people have the experience that they've been listened to and understood, they let go of their preoccupation with their own thoughts and feelings. The door to their mind swings open, and that makes it much easier for them to hear you.

Step 2. Backtrack. One form of giving feedback is backtracking, or repeating back some of the actual words that other people are using. This sends a clear signal that you are listening and that you consider what the other people are saying to be important.

Backtracking is particularly important when dealing with problem people over the phone because the only visual information they have about you is what they extrapolate from the sound of your voice and the words that you use.

Step 5. Confirm. Having listened carefully, you've now arrived at a crucial juncture. Rather than assuming anything, be certain that the difficult people are satisfied that the problem has been fully voiced. Ask, "Do you feel understood? Is there anything else?" When enough sincere questioning, listening, caring, and remembering are brought together, understanding is achieved, and difficult people become less difficult and more cooperative.

Ask yourself what positive purpose might be behind people's communications or behaviors, and acknowledge it. If you are not sure about the positive intent, just make something up. Even if the intent you try to blend with isn't true, you can still get a good response and create rapport.

Use "I" language. "From my point of view" and "The way I see it" are softening phrases that take the fight out of your words. They tell your difficult people that what you're expressing is your truth, rather than claiming to be the truth. This

When I'm at a Chinese restaurant having a hard time with chopsticks, I always hope that there's a Chinese kid at an American restaurant somewhere who's struggling mightily with a fork.

Reading is how we learn to attach ourselves to ourselves, and to others, and to the world: reading inhabits us with the tendrils of love.

What is so addictive about fiction is that it is the one reliable place in which we can apprehend and participate in - fully understand - the inward world of another person.

If you will read and listen, you will admit a multiplicity of voices and points of view, consider them with some humility, allow them gracious entrance however strident or discordant some of them may sound, then you will grow and change, and each of these voices will become a constituent part of who you become, an atom of growing being. It is literature and only literature than can do this.

Reading exposes is to the experiences and minds of others, makes us challenge our own provinciality, deepens and widens who we are and what we can become.

As your mind is renewed by the Spirit of Truth, you will not see relationships as opportunities to take from others, but to give.

Criticism is one of the ultimate manifestations of pride because when we criticize someone else, we assume we are superior to them.