Successful relationships, success in school, in business, and successful communication can all be greatly enhanced by improving on one primary skill:
And I want to share some valuable tools to increase your empathetic powers that will give you access to more successful interactions every day.
Empathy involves looking past one’s own perspective in any given situation, and understanding, as best as possible, the needs and experiences of another person.
Most of us are born with a natural empathetic ability; tools that help us survive.
By two months, infants can perceive and respond to the emotional states of their caregivers; by one year, “Children monitor adults’ expressions and use them to guide their behavior,” reports Nancy Eisenberg, a psychology professor at Arizona State University and an expert on emotional development. At 2 years of age, children can infer others’ desires from the direction of their gaze; at 3, they can label facial expressions as happy, sad, or angry.
And our skills can keep improving from there if we allow them to. Here are some steps that I use to have greater empathy inevery interaction:
- Withhold judgment: There is no true empathy when we judge.
- Get to know the other person: Listening is more important than speaking.
- Practice curiosity about strangers: Be kind and genuinely interested in people.
- Ask for feedback: Tell others what you believe they are saying and feeling. With humility, ask if you are right in your assumptions.
- Pay attention to the upper part of the face: The eyes are truly the windows to the soul.
- Be expressive: The more expressive you are, the more others will be free to be.
- Relax: Honesty and comfort are reciprocated with the same.
- Focus your attention outwards. Spend less time in your own mind and more time in theirs.
Daniel Siegel, UCLA psychiatrist said, “It’s a perceptual ability I call mindsight… It allows your brain to create a map of another person’s internal state.”
Decades of research on this type of empathy and mind reading (or, as psychologists call it, empathic accuracy) now reveal how it works, who’s especially good at it, and how we can improve our ability to divine others’ thoughts.
Let me know about your progress in being a more empathetic mind-reader!
In other news, I just created a 3 minute reel representing over an hour of my air time in the last year on the Hallmark Channel show Home & Family. Let me know your thoughts.
For more, check out my new videos
Your friend,
-Paul Draper
paul@mentalmysteries.com
801-541-2976
Websites:
wwww.PaulWDraper.com
www.MentalMysteries.com
www.AnthropologyOffice.com
www.helpinghospitalsheal.com
Read more about Paul:
Paul Draper Mentalism (pdf)
Transformational Leadership with Paul Draper (pdf)
“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
– Pablo Picasso
Magic & Communication
I am honored to be presenting a lecture on “Magic & Communication” before the Annenberg School for Communication on the campus of USC in Los Angeles on March 10th in the Annenberg Auditorium. This is their third such event and the first time that they will have a single speaker rather than an entire panel.
Here is a past TEDx talk to show you the sorts of things I may be talking about
Watch Here
I need your help
There is an organization that helps fight prejudice through teaching advocacy and leadership to youth. They helped me through my difficult teen years, and as of just a few months ago, I now sit on the board of this wonderful organization. Soon we will be holding a major fundraiser to make it possible for youth from poor neighborhoods and diverse background to come together in unity to learn the skills necessary to work together in this global melting pot / salad bowl that we all share.
Please join us for a night of great dancing, music, food, and a chance to honor this year’s three Humanitarians:
- President Dieter F. Uchtdorf – Second Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
- Dr. Ronald Coleman – Professor of History at the University of Utah
- Utahns Against Hunger – Non-profit dedicated to eliminating hunger in Utah since 1981
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2015
Time: 6:00pm (Check-in); 7:00pm (Start)
Location: Rail Event Center (235 North 500 West, Salt Lake City)
Please consider buying a ticket to this event for yourself or donating a ticket for one of our youth volunteers to attend.
You can purchase your tickets online. Tickets $100.00 per person.
