How to Empathize with Others Even if You Don’t Like Them
You have a choice about how you approach people. In this amazing corner of space in which humans live, relationships are central to your well-being, but they also present you with the most challenges. Though you may not care for someone’s personality, or your values conflict with theirs, you can still treat them with a basic sense of namaste to convey the feeling, Despite our differences, I respect the spirit within you.
Why is showing empathy so important? Because you want happy or at least mutually respectful relationships. Because you are choosing compassion and tolerance over drama, ego, or resentment. Because you want to understand those you care about so you don’t wound, alienate, or lose these dear ones.
In my book “The Genius of Empathy” I discuss how empathy’s role is to nourish and repair relationships rather than rupturing them. It’s all too easy to damage a friendship or a marriage. Stop listening or attempting to empathize, keep arguing, attacking, and shaming them and sooner or later, your relationship will either end or turn into a wound-mate relationship, which is based on hurting each other. Tending to the cherished people in your life is like tending to a garden. You must support the health of each relationship in this basic way. Finding empathy brings healing into your relationships and helps mend the hurt you might have caused each other.