Recently with a combination of putting myself out there for the pride network at work, making friends at work, and couples counselling, I feel I've gotten a lot better. Also just watched Coco and bawled my eyes out, my girlfriend joked that empathy was part of it.

Useful notes:

http://lifehacker.com/the-importance-of-empathy-in-everyday-life-1791961488

http://lifehacker.com/why-empathy-is-your-most-important-skill-and-how-to-pr-1505011685

I took a short Active Listening class which was nice enough but I didn't get that much from it. These seven rules of active listening are good lessons though:

1. Listen to yourself

2. Be mindful

3. Use empathy

4. Get curious about your emotions

5. Dig into awkward feelings

6. Learn to love paradoxes

7. Good listeners use humour as a practice (less)

I took a short Active Listening class which was nice enough but I didn't get that much from it. These seven rules of active listening are good lessons though:

1. Listen to yourself

2. Be mindful

3. Use empathy

4. Get curious about your emotions

5. Dig into awkward feelings

6. Learn to love parad (...more)

Recently had a conversation about emotional labour and listening better, and have taken some of it on board. Good recent progress with making myself available to listen to my partner.

A Night of Better Conversations: Empathy was indeed a great night for conversation. There wasn't much instruction on how to be more empathetic overall, but we were asked to listen and make ourselves vulnerable which is always good. My conversations included:

-one with three women on how we get stereotyped and compartmentalize our work and personal lives

-a one-on-one in which each of us had to talk for three minutes on the most important thing that happened to us in the last fortnight, while the other used non-verbal cues but couldn't talk

-another one-on-one on bold and uncomfortable questions

-one with two men on the nature of empathy (effective empathy or feeling other people's feelings vs cognitive empathy or thinking your way to understanding what they feel - the latter is more my style), assumptions that people make about us on where we're from, the purpose of introducing ourselves, and what the evening was like for us.



It was great. (less)

A Night of Better Conversations: Empathy was indeed a great night for conversation. There wasn't much instruction on how to be more empathetic overall, but we were asked to listen and make ourselves vulnerable which is always good. My conversations included:

-one with three women on how we (...more)

Signed up for a School of Life workshop



Have discussed this with my mentor circle



Empathy is my lowest strength according to the Gallup Strengths Finder