Shifting your perspective isn’t only necessary to offer empathy to others, but it gives your own views much more depth. Here’s an excerpt from my February post for The Pastry Box, published today: On our first day of class, the teacher led us out of the building and brought us a few blocks away to [Keep Reading…]
Empathy for Ourselves
We’re in this situation where we have a finite period of time, we really need to pay close attention to this person. We need to concentrate. We need to focus. And we need to go into it with the intent of gaining understanding, of challenging our assumptions, of teasing out the problems and needs and [Keep Reading…]
The Song of Peace
Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech We are all each other’s brothers and sisters. We all come from the [Keep Reading…]
Give Us the Answer
“You are an expert,” he told me. “We want you to give us the answer.” “Then I’m not for you.” I guess I could have just taken the money, but it would have cost me my integrity. Many companies don’t believe they have time to learn a new way to work. They just want someone [Keep Reading…]
The Evolution of User Experience
When I started my career in user experience, my purpose was to make digital products easier and more pleasurable to use. Interfaces were poorly organized, poorly labeled, and took forever to learn—and I wanted to fix them all. I applied my knowledge of best practices and emerging trends. I used design patterns and standard elements [Keep Reading…]
Empathy is Not a Buzzword
Empathy is not a buzzword; it’s a life pursuit. The wings of wisdom and compassion have been taught by Buddhism for 2500 years. This isn’t new. What’s new is the movement to integrate compassionate practices into business. Particularly in the tech industry which is often so dehumanizing. Left unchecked, technology turns people into proxies. That’s [Keep Reading…]
Connecting and Disconnecting
We have become a society of people who avoid each other. Our instinct is no longer to extend ourselves to help a fellow human being in need, but rather to protect ourselves, our feelings, our time. We hide. We prefer to be alone. We prefer to sit back and observe. We prefer to climb inside [Keep Reading…]
Email is People
We all complain about too much email. We just can’t find the time to get to it all. Too many emails, too much to read through. We already have too much to do. Inbox Zero. GTD. Three sentences. Email bankruptcy. We keep telling each other that email is stress, it’s a necessary evil, it is [Keep Reading…]
Living a Compassionate Life
Despite the fact that I make my living helping people build their capacity for empathy, I still feel I could do a much better job of living a compassionate life. For me, empathy is easy; I can’t turn it off. But in order to feel compassion for another person, I have to want it. While [Keep Reading…]
Embodying Empathy
The funny thing about empathy is that everyone thinks they have it, and yet so few people show it. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But it’s not enough to understand, we have to act. Understanding happens in the mind. Action happens in the body. To care [Keep Reading…]
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