Mental Health Training

Understanding the 3 Types of Empathy

Empathy is a wonderfully selfless response to someone else's plight. Not only do you feel sympathetic for someone in a bad situation, but you understand their feelings. You fully experience the event from the perspective of the person going through it.

In some cases, it's almost as if you're physically and emotionally living through the experience yourself. This can be very draining for the highly empathetic individual. They're always seeing situations where they internalize another person's emotions and feel they have to help in some way.

Some people don't have that level of empathy. They will happily help another person and might even understand the point of view of an individual. They don't necessarily identify with what caused the problem in the first place. Even so, they still respond with empathy.

To understand more about yourself and your feelings, let's take a look at the three different types of empathy. One isn't better than another. They're just different ways of responding to the same situation.

1 – Understanding Emotional Empathy

We'll introduce you to cognitive empathy in a minute. One of the best ways to understand emotional empathy is with a comparison to the cognitive variety. Just remember this.

"Cognitive empathy is an attempt to walk a mile in another person's shoes, while emotional empathy is screaming in pain when someone else steps on a nail."

That definition from the Masterclass website hits the nail on the head, pun intended.

This almost always occurs when someone experiences something you've been through before. You might not respond in that way if you never stepped on a nail yourself. If you have, and you see someone else do it, your mind and body can go through a nearly identical physical and visceral experience.

This is truly understanding what another person is experiencing because it's accompanied by a physical response of some kind.

2 – Cognitive Empathy

We just talked about how this form of empathy is different from when you have an emotional empathetic response. Cognitive empathy can be described as taking someone else's perspective.

You relate to what someone else is going through, even if you've never experienced it yourself. This might mean looking at a situation or listening to someone talk while actively trying to imagine their feelings. You aren't inserting your personal point of view. There's no bias on your part, and you're not trying to insert your own experiences.

Cognitive empathy simply means a conscious effort to understand the perspective of someone else. This is used in interviews to get the subject to open up and share deeper feelings.

3 – Compassionate Empathy and Problem-Solving

Do people often come to you for advice? This might be because you've displayed compassionate empathy. It's a wonderful skill in problem-solving situations.

Compassionate empathy means looking at a negative situation and trying to get at the cause. You analyse the underlying reasons why something happened, as well as the effects. Compassionate empathy can be considered a hybrid of both the cognitive and emotional forms of empathy.

With this ability, you can demonstrate to a person that you totally understand where they're coming from. You don't offer any bias or prejudice. You may even offer an alternative way of thinking or some insight that helps the person in need.

Empathy in any form makes the world a better place. It's selfless and caring. Understanding what type of empathy you're practising can give you a better idea of the reasons behind your response.

The Benefits of Empathy

The empathetic person takes on the feelings of another. When you act with empathy, you share emotions and feelings. Some people can almost physically feel what another person is going through.

Others might have a less intense experience. In any situation, empathy helps you to understand and relate to others. It's a social skill that everyone should develop. Empathy can help you build trust in your personal and career relationships.

Like sympathy, empathy means you feel bad about what someone is going through. Unlike sympathy, empathy always means following up with kindness. You do something to try to help the person get out of a negative situation or experience.

What's really neat is that empathy doesn't just benefit the person on the receiving end of kindness.

The Benefits of Empathy for the Giver

Studies show that the empathetic person experiences less stress and anxiety than others. Everyone is different. Some people just aren't that empathetic. It doesn't mean they're mean people or that they don't care about others. It just means their emotional radar isn't as sensitive as someone who's highly empathetic.

That's a shame, because empathy lowers stress.

Experts believe this is because of a shared emotional experience. It could be that there is a physical process internally that triggers the release of "feel good" hormones and chemicals. Whatever happens, data clearly shows that if you want less stress, anxiety and depression in your life, learn to be more empathetic.

Empathy Makes You Grateful for What You Have

Sometimes getting in the emotional point of view of another person can help you appreciate what you have. You see someone struggling emotionally. You ask a few questions. Likewise, you get to know the situation. Perhaps you were in a similar spot yourself at one time.

You can identify very clearly with the emotional issues that person is experiencing. It causes such a response in you that you reach out. You feel compelled to offer assistance and to help this person in some way.

After this experience has passed, it's not uncommon to feel gratitude.

You're reminded when you went through the same problem. You understand that this individual you encountered is currently working through a difficult time. Not only that, but you additionally realise that you are fortunately not going through the same issue.

This can cause you to take a little time and express gratitude for your wonderful life and all the blessings in it.

Empathy Is a Boomerang

Act with empathy for someone else, and you're more likely to get the same response when it's needed. When people see you acting selflessly and with great empathy, they remember.

Sometime down the road, when you could benefit from empathy, people will recall when you helped them or someone in their family. This could result in a wonderful boomerang of kindness that gives you assistance right when you need it.

Empathy is often returned to the giver. It helps you grow emotionally and socially. You can improve your relationships at work and at home by showing a little more empathy. You also enjoy less stress and anxiety when you become an empathetic person

5 Steps to Shift Your Limiting Beliefs for Good 

How are you your own worst enemy? We limit ourselves so much. We live in our heads and come up with all these ways to keep us from getting anything accomplished. Even though deep down, we know we're good enough, and how much we're fully capable of getting things done.

The only way to get past these self-sabotaging behaviours is to take active, intentional steps to remedy your thinking. Let's look at 5 steps that will shift your limiting beliefs for good.

Stop

Wait a minute; what were you thinking? If a thought feels off about something, it's time to stop and examine this idea much closer. Is this perhaps a self-limiting belief?

Think About What You're Saying

Where is the lie in this thought? You've already figured out there's something wrong with it, or you wouldn't be going through this process. This means something about it is not ringing true. When you understand where the lie is, it becomes easier to know how to counter it. 

Look for the Proof

Is there any proof this self-limiting thought is true? Let's examine the part you feel is a lie. Here's where you need to take a step back from the situation if you can and look very impartially at what's going on. Is any grain of truth in what you're thinking?

Take Control

If what you were thinking is a lie, it's relatively easy to counter the false aspects of the statement with the truth. But what if this thought was at least partially true? You start by reminding yourself this isn't always the case. For example, you might be thinking you are always late. Maybe you are, in fact, late sometimes. To perform this step, you would need to recall various instances when you were on time. By countering the lie, you are taking control of the situation, and not allowing the limiting belief to have any sway over you.

Get Help

Sometimes it can be challenging to remove limiting beliefs by yourself. In these instances, it can be beneficial to talk to a friend, or even a counsellor, to help you see the truth. There is nothing wrong with getting help, especially from someone who is in a position to be impartial.

Self-limiting beliefs don't have to control your life. By examining your thoughts, especially those that seem to hold you back, you will find it much easier to move forward toward your goals. Soon you will realize success.

Restoring Your Self-Worth After a Toxic Relationship

Well, that didn’t go right.

We walk into a relationship with so much enthusiasm. We think what we’ve found is the best thing in the world, which is a heady feeling for while it lasts. Sadly, when a relationship is toxic, we’re frequently the last to know. By the time we escape, our self-worth has already taken a hefty blow.

So, how do you restore positive feelings about yourself after a toxic relationship?

Release Your Victimhood

The more you focus on what happened, the more you get stuck, so the sooner you can quit revisiting the past and dwelling on perceptions of ill-treatment, the sooner you’re going to put all this behind you. This doesn’t mean to say this was your fault, but obsessing about the ‘should’ and going back over every encounter is only going to hurt you regardless of whether you were in the right or not.

Drop the Blame

Was it your fault? Not. The sooner you can let go of any residual guilt or bad feelings about the relationship, the happier you’ll be. The next step should help.

Silence Their Voice

The problem with toxic relationships is you tend to believe what the other person said about you, no matter how outlandish it seemed at the time. Now their voice is there, lurking in your head to remind you of all your so-called shortcomings at every opportunity—time to tell them to shut up once and for all.

Embrace the New You

Find joy in being single. Spoil yourself. Do that thing you always wanted to do. Take lessons, and build your skill set as you build yourself up. Become your own best friend in a way that doesn’t require validation from any outside source.

Believe Your Friends

You hear the compliments, but they’re going in one ear and out the other. Rather than brush off the nice things, people around you are saying, start listening. Listening until these words become a part of who you are.

Create Goals You Love

What would you like to do with your life? Too often, our goals reflect the needs and desires around us. Now is the time to reverse this. Accepting you are capable, and your goals are worth fighting for, what do YOU want to do?

Affirmations

Work through the worst offenders of negative self-talk through positive affirmations. Take note of what you’re telling yourself. Rewrite the script and turn these statements around into affirmations that you read to yourself every day.

Remember, this is a process and is likely to take time. By reminding yourself of just how amazing you are, and focusing hard on these steps, eventually, you will start feeling the difference even if you don’t see it yet. Hang in there!

Do You Love Or Hate Your Work? 

Back in my corporate days, I worked for a huge company where it was easy to become just another face in the crowd. It was your typical corporate setting where you would find many people who truly hated being there.

There was one lady in particular whose cubicle I would pass on a daily basis. Practically every time I walked by, she would be on a social networking or celebrity gossip website. If managers were in the area, she would quickly perk up and look busy. When the coast was clear, back she would go to the time-wasting.

I also remember her being negative and miserable a lot of the time. I actually felt terrible for her.

As someone who dropped out of the corporate life to pursue something with more meaning for me, I can see with hindsight exactly what was going on. She hated her position and did not want to be there. But another part of her believed that she must keep this job because there was no other option.

Thinking back, I’m sure she wasn’t a lazy person by nature, and I bet she had hobbies or other interests outside of work that made her feel alive and positive. She could immerse herself in these activities for hours and feel like no time had passed at all.

This is the kind of engaged, focused activity that makes people feel genuinely happy. For me, I know I always feel my best when I have put my heart and soul into a project that has meaning for me and that I am passionate about. It's even more powerful if you can get paid for it!

The challenge then becomes, how do you align your entire life so that you spend the majority of time engaged in the kind of work that makes you come alive? How do you find something that you are already good at, already enjoy, and want to become the best at?

All it takes is the willingness to try something new. If you are in a job you hate and have passion for something totally different, you don’t have to quit your job and risk the farm. But you can take on a small passion project that you devote your weekends to.

Sometimes, all you have to do is start, and you will create the momentum you need to remap the entire direction of your life in a new, more exciting direction.

Am I Too Impatient?

The next time you get on an elevator, pay attention to the other passengers when they get on. The patient ones will step in, push the button to their desired floor, step aside and smile while they ride.

An impatient person will step in, choose their floor, and start tapping the close door button if it doesn’t move fast enough.

You might shake your head at the spectacle unless you can commiserate with the impatient person.

It is possible to be too impatient. Your quality of life decreases while your stress levels increase when you are.

We all lose our patience now and again, but are you too impatient?

5 Indications That You May be Too Impatient

If you have ever worried that you are an incredibly impatient person, consider these five indications that suggest you are:

1. You grow frustrated standing in long lines. Whether it is the bank or the grocery store, you hate waiting more than 30 seconds for the line to move. In your opinion, you have a million other things you could do in that span of time. You may even voice your frustration in an embarrassing way.

2. You see no problem in interrupting people because it saves time. Waiting for your mom to tell you of her trip to the doctor is torture as she recounts her entire day. You find yourself interjecting to help her get to the point. You always want to speak over someone to hurry the story along.

3. You are a beacon of nervous energy. Family and friends constantly ask you to sit down or stop tapping your foot. You are a bundle of nerves and cannot stand to sit idle when there are things you need to do and are anxious.

4. You have a quick temper. If things do not go the way you planned, you explode. The family has to walk on eggshells around you, especially when they see you have reached your boiling point.

5. You refuse to count on others to ensure things get accomplished. You prefer to do things yourself because you don’t trust others to get things done. While you may want help, you prefer to head the project since others are not as capable as your mind.

We all have moments when we lose patience. However, some people struggle harder with it than others. You may find that being impatient drains your energy and hampers your relationship.

Now is the best time to put that poor behaviour behind you and learn the skill of patience.

Reasons We Struggle with Patience

The alarm fails to go off, so you oversleep. Now you are late, and you have a flat tire to make things worse. You know that if one more thing happens, you might explode with some expletives that would make a sailor blush.

Every day, we fight to maintain a sense of calm as the world around us pushes our patience buttons. We may have heard that patience is a virtue, but why is it so hard to be patient? What factors play into our ability to let go of our frustrations and let things roll off our backs?

6 Reasons People Are Impatient

Our fast-paced society has us frustrated over small things. Even though we know we need to learn how to be patient, we all still struggle, and here’s why:

1.    Our habits are disrupted.

Habits offer comfort. They give us a sense of calm in a chaotic world. We become impatient when something comes along and disrupts our typically scheduled patterns.

2.    Things are important, but time is running out.

You have an important meeting. While you left with plenty of time to get there, delays occurred. You may have a flat tire, or there is an accident on the highway. As the clock hands move closer to the appointment time, your patience grows thinner and thinner.

3.    Other people succeed, and we don’t.

The comparison trap can cause much upheaval in your life. Seeing others succeed in pursuing their goals while you are stuck in a rut is bound to cause jealousy and some impatience on your part.

4.    We feel overwhelmed.

Having too much to do leaves many of us feeling overwhelmed. So we move from task to task, working fast and efficiently, until someone comes along and tips the apple cart. Now things are stalled, and patience is lost.

5.    We don’t see results as fast as we think we should.

Let’s say you want to lose weight. You research methods and choose to eat healthier and exercise. You start out great and drop seven pounds your first month. Then you lose two; then none for several weeks. When progress stalls, it is easy to grow impatient.

6.    We are tired and hungry.

Anytime you are tired, you are likely to lose your patience with others fast. Being hungry has the same effect.

Recognizing why we become impatient is the first step in pursuing a happier life filled with patience. Consider which of these reasons play the most significant factors for you, and then learn how to combat impatience.

Great Leaders Embrace Failure – You Should Too

If you hate failing, that's a good thing. It means you're driven. People that aren't fazed by failure or loss don't expect much of themselves. You're different. You're like most folks because failure is frustrating to you.

You can begin to question yourself when you get something wrong. Likewise, you wonder if you're capable of achieving what's important to you. Even small failures can lead to an "I quit" attitude. Have several small setbacks in a row, and you might feel like giving up on making an effort at all.

That's not what great leaders do. They embrace failure.

That's definitely the case for a man who was defeated in a run for the state legislature. He failed in business several times. Shortly after one such failure, the love of his life died. This led to a nervous breakdown the following year.

He returned, only to be defeated in his run for speaker of the house two years later. Then he was defeated for nomination to Congress. He was eventually elected to Congress, only to lose renomination two years later.

He was rejected as a land officer and then defeated in his attempt to become a US Senator. A couple of years later, defeat would once again come calling, as he lost the nomination of Vice President for his party in 1858.

His Failures Were So Legendary They Were Given a Name

You could easily forgive such a man if he gave up. That's a staggering list of failures. It would be easy to believe the world was just against you if there had been your experiences.

The man's lack of success was so legendary it was given its own name ... "Lincoln's Failures."

We're talking, of course, about the 16th President of the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln recovered from those staggering failures, only to be faced with a Civil War and a political struggle that saw many in his own party turn their backs on him.

Yet, he continued to do what he had done so many times in his past; he refused to give up.

He would eventually go on to help end slavery in America. This allowed African-Americans to finally enjoy the civil and social freedoms they had been denied. Many historians that talk about such things count Abraham Lincoln as one of the highest-achieving presidents in US history.

Failure Can Defeat You, or It Can Teach You

Prodigious inventor Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times before he successfully invented the incandescent light bulb. He's famous for saying he didn't regard lack of success as a failure. He simply learned 1,000 different ways that wouldn't work.

Abraham Lincoln no doubt had the same approach. His perseverance in reaching the highest leadership role in the United States was partly responsible for his eventual attainment of that title.

He also learned from his failures. He embraced them as teachers instead of despising them for creating so much hardship in his life.

Successful leaders don't give up. They persevere in the face of failure. They also learn from their failures and embrace them as teachers instead of declarations of who they are.

A failure is just an event, nothing more. It's up to you whether you learn from it and move forward with better information, or bow down to your failure and give up.

Steve Jobs Gives You Permission to Be Different

Steve Jobs was notoriously hard on his staff. It's well known that he could be difficult to work for. He was also superb at running Apple Inc., which he co-founded with Stephen Wozniak.

The two young men began business together in 1976. They worked out of Jobs' garage. What would eventually become a hugely successful computer and cell phone manufacturing company started out with very little money?

Wozniak sold a programmable calculator, and Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus for start-up capital. Jobs then went to work finding financial backers. Just one year later, the Apple II made its debut. Success was almost immediate due to the perfect timing of an explosion in the popularity of personal computers.

Apple Inc. had an initial public offering in 1981 that broke records. Two years later, Apple joined the Fortune 500 list of the top companies in America. It was the quickest any company had ever gone from IPO to inclusion on that exclusive list.

The First Trillion-Dollar Company

In 2018 Apple became the first company in the world to boast a market capitalization of $1 trillion. It took over two more years for the Jobs/Wozniak creation to hit a $2 trillion market cap. That was another record-breaking cap number.

What can we learn from this man identified as quirky, personable, a great thinker, weird, and sometimes incredibly unlikeable? Let's look at one of his famous quotes for that answer.

"Don't be afraid to be different."

Steve Jobs frequently said that it's the crazy people that change the world. He surrounded himself with people that had different ideas about how to get things done. He understood that many people saw him as weird and downright different.

He so believed in this idea that he used it in Apple's "Think Different" advertising campaign. The many times he was interviewed on the subject, Jobs said that people shouldn't make an effort to be different. But if they are different than most people, that's okay.

In other words, he didn't want people to be anything other than what they were as individuals. He believed that if you're different from most other people, embrace that. In many cases, it's a sign you have something new and innovative to bring to the table.

Jobs was worth $1 million when he was 23. Just two years later, his personal net worth was $100 million. While that's impressive, he said he never did anything for the money and instead loved what he was doing. He was just being himself.

That's what mattered to him. His incredible ideas and creations may never have seen the light of day if he had bowed down to conformity. Don't worry if you're different. That might be the best thing for you and the world.

What a Dyslexic High School Dropout Turned Billionaire Can Teach You About Leadership

If you accumulate a billion dollars in net worth, you'll develop some leadership skills in the process. Hit that billion-dollar figure several times over, and your ability as a leader has to be pretty sharp.

That's the case with a high school dropout who ran away from education at the tender age of 16. His teachers called him lazy. He just didn't seem to fit in. He didn't know it at the time, but many of his problems in school came from the fact that he had dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a condition that makes it difficult to understand what someone is reading. A dyslexic can struggle to read, write, spell and even speak. At the time of this eventual billionaire's problems in school, when he dropped out in 1966, not as much was known about dyslexia.

Children were often diagnosed as troublemakers and problems. There was no efficient treatment because this mental disorder had yet to be studied thoroughly.

Even with these staggering difficulties, the young man in question started a business venture as a teenager. He created a magazine called "Student." Though it quickly became profitable, it began to lose money in the late 1960s, after he had left school.

That's when Richard Branson formed Virgin Mail Order Records. It was the first of many successful businesses he would launch in his life.

Sir Richard Branson Credits Dyslexia For Teaching Him the Power of Delegation

Great leaders understand they can't do everything. Successful leaders will always hire people that can do things they can't. They seek out the best of the best, and they put them to work. They delegate tasks and responsibilities and follow up effectively.

Branson, who received the British honour of Knighthood in 1999, said his response to dyslexia was important for developing this core leadership quality.

He struggles to understand terms even as an adult and sometimes has problems reading. This is how he learned to delegate as a young man. He said he quickly realized that if understanding everything about a business was up to him, he would fail miserably.

He began to hire people that could do the things he couldn't. Today he says that during business deals if he can't fully grasp what's being said and communicated, he doesn't worry. He hires people to do that for him.

You can only do so much. You may be the most productive person in the history of mankind, but there's only so much you can do. Whether you need help with the chores around the house or you're a Fortune 500 CEO that wants to be more productive, learn to delegate. If this skill is credited with turning a high school dropout into a successful manager of more than 400 businesses, it can help you.