Empathy…Illustrated!

Posted by DJL on Dec 16, 2013 in Living Well | 1 comment

Anyone who has read this blog for long knows that I’m a huge fan of Brené Brown. I love her work on the centrality of vulnerability to authentic living. So I was delighted to see on her blog that the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA for short) recently hosted Brené for a presentation and then illustrated a portion of her talk. RSA Animated Shorts are a delightful way to bring a concept or idea to life and invite us to see it differently. The portion illustrated below is about empathy.

One of her key findings is that empathy – the willingness to go where someone else is living emotionally, rather than try to bring them to where you are – is central to human connection. Which means that when someone is having a hard time, our job isn’t to solve their problem or try to make them feel better or put their difficulty in a better perspective, but just to listen, to understand, to feel with them. Easier said than done! (Especially when it’s my wife or kids who are struggling and I want to respond to – and preferably to fix! – what they’re naming, just just be there with them.) But as Brené says, “The truth is, rarely can a response make something better — what makes something better is connection.” Good to keep in mind!

I’ll put the 3-minute short film below, followed by her longer video-taped talk.

Note: If you’re receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.