Eight Ways to Improve Your Empathy

"Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. People are being born with less empathy than ever before. This is actually a problem that has been increasing in severity. Sadly, people are becoming more apathetic.

The lack of empathy, or compassion, is causing many problems amongst people that need to be dealt with.

This article doesn't offer any miraculous ways for people to suddenly develop empathy if they don't already have it. It does however, has eight ways for people to improve empathy if they currently lack it.

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Remember, before you read any further make sure that the silver of this article is not already known to you. If it is, then why are you reading? Anyways, on with the list:

1) Get involved in activities that make you feel like you are part of a group. Exercise is an excellent example.

By doing this, your sense of individuality will decrease and your focus will be on the team itself. You'll begin to think more about others than yourself, which is very important in empathy.

2) Continue to educate yourself on social issues.

If you're not sure where to start, the local news is a good place. Social problems are everywhere, so they will be easy to find. Even if you don't agree with someone's views, it helps to know what they are.

3) Spend more time with animals.

Animals care about themselves, but don't have the brain capacity to think about others feelings. If you spend enough time around them this will help train your mind to feel for others without thinking about yourself, which is what empathy really is.

4) While watching movies, don't pay attention to what's happening on the screen. Instead try to look at everyone else in the theater and notice their reactions.

This is a very good way of training your mind to focus on other people before yourself. When it comes time to watch the movie, you'll find that you don't care as much about what's happening on screen. You'll notice more of your surroundings and begin thinking of others first.

5) Practice identifying how someone else may be feeling by reading books or watching documentaries.

Learning this skill can be very important in certain situations, but should not take the place of your own feelings.

6) Make a point to always ask people how they feel and what they think about something before you offer an opinion.

This one is very similar to #2, but it can be very helpful to not only increase your empathy, but possibly to decrease the number of arguments that you get into with people.

7) Don't just listen or watch something. Think critically about it and see how it applies to real life.

This can be very fun and really helps with empathy if you care to develop it. You can learn a lot about different people and their views on life this way, which can really help out later.

8) Make sure you don't spend too much time around large groups of people.

This one's controversial but, if spending more time around people is helping your empathy then spending less time will probably hurt it. If you're spending all of your time alone and nobody to practice with, then try getting a pet or something.