Empathy — Connection Course Series #4

When you have empathy with someone, they're more likely to be open because they feel that you're with them. And you can't do anything to show to them, you're just empathetic and it just occurs.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. My name is Brett Kistler. I'm an adventurer, entrepreneur, and a self-exploration enthusiast I'm here with my co-host, Joe Hudson. Joe is a business coach who spent decades working with some of the world's top executives and teams, developing a unique model of human patterns that underpin how we operate with ourselves, each other, and the world. A good entry point into this model is a mindset called VIEW: Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy, and Wonder. Through understanding and cultivation, we learn to easefully drop into the VIEW state of mind, deepening self-awareness and increasing our connection with the world around us. To learn more about this podcast or courses, visit artofaccomplishment.com.

When we imagine a professional environment, we often see a world where emotions are held inside and remain unseen by others, filtered out as distractions. We might focus on the business stuff, that is, the logistics and agreements that seem more relevant than the feelings behind them. Even in our personal lives, intense reactions from others can feel like a distraction from the connection that we want. What if learning to be acutely aware of others' internal experiences can give us more useful information than the words they speak? How can our personal and professional relationships change as we learn to notice and address the hurt behind an angry attack or the fear behind a hasty agreement? This is the practice of empathy, the E in VIEW. Joe, how do you define empathy?

Oh, so hard. Uh, Empathy is so much of a feeling more than it is an intellectual understanding. But I would say it's being with somebody's experience without losing yourself in it. That's what I would say empathy is. So it's not watching somebody's experience, and it's not wanting to change somebody's experience. It's being with them in the experience without losing yourself in it.

Give me an example.

So oftentimes when I'm working with clients, for instance, they'll be all agitated around something, and I'll just ask a simple question like, is this yours? You know, recently there was some COVID anxiety that one of my clients was feeling, and I was like, is this yours? And they'd like just immediately drop. They're like, oh no, it's not mine. So that's one way. That's why, Kwanda, when you're in it, The other way is the other way to define kind of what it isn't, so to speak, is like you see this all the time with babies crying. So a baby starts crying and some people get instantly annoyed and some people can be with that crying. And that's really a deep expression of their capacity to have empathy in that moment. There's actually something biologically that happens too after a baby cries for an extended period of time. For men, their testosterone increases. But in those first couple minutes of crying, our capacity to empathize with that child or be agitated by that child, uh, is really, is really kind of the, that linchpin. Okay.

You said earlier this question, is it yours? What do you mean by that?

Oftentimes highly empathetic people, um, kind of go beyond empathy. What the way I would define empathy, they would go beyond it, and then they're not being able to tell what's their emotional state and what's another person's emotional state. This really happens to people who were like children of alcoholics or children of abuse, people who had to survive by knowing the emotional state of somebody when they walk into the room. And so they can very much get lost in the other person's emotions and think that they're theirs. We have these things called mirror neurons in our brain, and, and they basically allow us to feel the state of other people on some level. And, and sometimes when we're feeling somebody else, we forget it's that we're feeling them, that it's not us that's feeling that way. And in a weird way, we start feeling that way. So then it's really even more confusing because then you're like, oh, I'm feeling it. But if you ask yourself the question, hey, is this mine? And then that can clarify a lot.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The idea of mirror neurons is a, is a little bit interesting. It's the way I see it is that basically our entire system, all of our consciousness is kind of mirroring our reality in some way. And is it mirroring and like correlating perfectly with it and then losing ourselves? Or are we correlating with it and being with it and experiencing it and learning from it?

Yeah, I think mirror neurons in neurology is, is such a mystery still. You know, what is it that allows— is it some form of mirror neuron that allows a whole bunch of birds to know how to turn at the exact same moment? Like, it's a— it's— there's something particularly around mammals where there's— most mammals communicate without any words. And so they're really relying on their ability to sense the experience of the other animals.

Yeah. Social nervous system.

Yeah.

So tell me, tell me how practicing empathy will benefit us. What does this do for us?

Uh, well, one of the great benefits is that if anything that you have a hard time empathizing with means that you have a hard time with that emotional state for yourself. So that's fantastic, um, because our decision-making process is really based on emotions, right? If I take the emotional center of your brain away, you cease to make decisions. It would take you half an hour to decide what color pen So we're really making decisions based on trying to feel or trying not to feel certain emotions, whether we like it or not, whether we think we're being logical or not. You know, if that emotional center of your brain gets taken away, you still have all the intellect, you still have all the rationale, but you still can't make the decisions. So it really helps us clarify our decision-making. It really allows us to help us be with our own emotional— so, and to discover where we're having a hard time being with our own emotions. And if you think about your life in this way, if you think about like how much of your life has been decided by, you know, I don't want to feel like a failure, or I want to feel like a success, or I don't want to feel unhappy— how many decisions have you made based on that criteria? And to be able to be with all of your emotions, what will that do? If you look forward to all of your emotions, what will that do to your decision-making? And how does it change your emotional state? Right? If I have sadness and I don't want to feel it, it feels very different than if I have sadness and I want to feel it. So those are like a lot of the things that will benefit us on an inward perspective. Externally, obviously, you know, people like it when other people are with them. You know, if you think about your friends and the people you feel closest to in the world, you can find that they're more able to be with you than people who you don't particularly like. And If you look at your friends and you say, what is it about your friends that you want to have changed? Oftentimes it's— it fits into the categories of their inability to be with you or see you for who you are. So there's that whole thing too, right? Where it's just like we want to be empathized with. Most of us want to be empathized with. And, and so it just creates deeper connection, more loving, more capacity to love.

Seems like the first half of what you described is like feeling into our emotions to find out where our thoughts and rationale are coming from. And then in others, being able to see behind that too. So if somebody, if somebody's presenting you with a solution or an idea, whether it's a business context or, you know, relationship, to be able to see behind that, what the feeling is that that's coming from, can allow you to address a deeper root cause or need.

Yeah, at least it gives you the capacity to do it. You know, sometimes people get upset if you do that. I was like, wow, it really doesn't seem like you're angry. It seems like you're hurt. No, I'm not. You know, that kind of, right? But, but generally it goes pretty well and people want to deal with the underlying thing. You know, so many, so many logical arguments are really not at all about the logic. It's not really about the tactics or the facts. I mean, just look at most public discourse. It's not really about the facts. It's, it's about the emotional state of people and their fear and what they need and what they want. What they're angry about. So yeah, to be able to connect with people on that level and to not tell them that they need to be different, but to actually be with them, it's a huge capacity. It really allows you to have a much deeper, authentic relationship or communication with people.

Yeah, I think the public discourse is a great example because a lot of people get so triggered around other people believing different facts than them, and I think that that's really just coming from a lack of feeling seen.

Yeah, or a feeling of that they're out of control in their world, or that they're helpless, or that there's forces beyond them that are controlling them, or— right, so many emotions are happening there. Yeah.

So earlier you said, you said this a couple of times, to be with somebody in their experience without losing yourself. How do you prevent that?

The easiest way to do it, I mean, it's just a really simple way, is just put some attention in your own body. While you're with somebody. If you're— if you happen to be that type that has that deep empathy and you lose yourself in the person, the kind of the traditional way people do it is they become defensive. They just hold a level of defense and they're like, merh. And that works, um, but it doesn't allow you to be empathetic. It just prevents you from getting lost in them. To be empathetic in a successful way is to maintain a certain amount of your awareness in your own body. So like right now, when you're listening to me, you could also be paying attention to the bottom of your feet, or you could also be paying attention to how the sound of this podcast feels in your ear, in your inner ear. And then that allows you to be with yourself while listening to me and being with me in my experience. It's about as easy as that— just putting some attention in your own body. And the other kind of more intellectual way is to just be aware of when it's happening. I think that's the biggest challenge for most people, is that they just don't know when it's happening. And a great sign that it's happening is if you buy into the story of whatever anybody is saying. You know, let's say you have a friend and they're like, oh my boyfriend, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dun! The world, my boss, and da da da da. And if you're like, yeah, you've been victimized and we need to do something about it, it's like you pretty much have— you're in them now. Or just the opposite, you know, these people are bad and da da da, yeah, and then you're in them, uh, if you buy into the story. If you are with them emotionally but you know that the story that they're telling is true within their context but not true within everybody's context, then you're, you're pretty much not lost in them.

This sounds very non-intellectual, and a lot of people, a lot of people are going to want to try to understand this more. What would you say to folks who want to understand or analyze emotions, or just have that, have that tendency, or just want to analyze this process?

Yeah, yeah, you're, you're screwed, is what I would say. I mean, we can, we can tell you a good story. I mean, we're doing it right now, we're telling you good stories about it. Um, but it's not going to really help. Empathy is a felt sense. It's like, say you close your eyes and you know where your left foot is, right? That, that's called proprioception. It's knowing where your body is in space. Like, how do you describe that logically, right? You can describe what it is logically, potentially, but you can't really describe how to do it logically. So similar with like going to the bathroom, it's like, how do you know when you're done going to the bathroom? Like, where's the logic? Are you measuring something? You know, are you, are you timing it? No, there's just a felt sense. Oh, that's done. So it's the same thing. Empathy is a felt sense, and felt sense can't really be described by the intellect with any kind of accuracy. Like, it's like looking at color. How do you, how do you describe seeing green? You know, it's like it requires a label that is arbitrary. So So logic isn't really going to do any good here for that, uh, and it's why it's so easy to dismiss things like empathy and, um, energy or whatever words people are using, um, but there's a felt sense to it. And I think you find this in a lot of things, um, prayer or meditation. It's really easy to dismiss those things even if you hear the logic behind them until you feel them. And then once you have a felt sense of what prayer can do, whether you believe in a God or not, um, or what the felt sense of believing in a God is like and what the felt sense of not believing in a God is like, you know, all those things, they're very felt sense. And so you can argue it night and day, but it's why nobody changes their mind on this stuff until they have a change of felt sense. So if you want a logical conversation about empathy, go and feel people, go and be empathetic and stay in yourself while you do it. And that's a far better way. Just experiment.

That seems to be, you know, I mean, that is true across all of these View podcasts, is that these are all pointers, intellectual pointers to something that you ultimately need to feel into. Yeah. Experience.

They're all, I mean, it's why oftentimes in these conversations they could be logically contradictory. It's because we're just creating frameworks that make it easier to feel into or realize something. Um, it's, it's not about telling a, like, a, a truth. There's no, you know, it's not, it's not like there's one way or there's something that's right here. There's just, how do you want to be is the question, and that question isn't answered with logic.

—And just feeling our way beneath any fear response we have, which brings me to another question. We've been talking about losing yourself in the other person not being empathy as you're defining it. And losing yourself in the other person sounds a lot like the flight fear response that we've discussed before, like fleeing from your experience into theirs to try to fix it. And then you'll dive into a story about why they have that experience. And then you'll create some idea of who's the abuser, the tyranny, or the victim. And I imagine there's something equivalent that we do in the fight and the freeze responses as well. How do these other forms of fear impact our ability to be present with others in their emotions? Right.

Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's, if you think about it from an evolutionary sense, uh, right, so we have fear. It's not, if you're really scared, it's really not time to empathize. And so, so that part of your brain goes offline and, you know, your fear response comes online. So if you are in flight, like you said, you're, you're looking at the, the world around you, the environment and the actors in that environment, and you're trying to figure out how to manage those. If you are in fight, then immediately that emotion that you're starting to feel in your system is going to make you angry, and you're going to try to stop it, like the angry person on the plane when the kid starts crying. And the freeze response is a disassociation. It's like a checking out. You can just watch the eyes kind of haze over. It makes sense that fear— when we're in fear, it's really hard to have any empathy at all.

So how do you prevent this fear response, or let it pass through you, or What do you do with this when this— when you know that you have a, like, a deep bodily patterning to fear in a particular business context or relationship context? You feel it.

That's the, that's the trick to all of this stuff is like, how do you feel the emotion? And, and I say feel it, I don't mean like be taken away by it. You know, there's just some saying that I heard the other day. It was beautiful. I think it's from some Supreme Court judge. I don't know, but it said I wouldn't give you a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I'll give you my whole world for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. And what it's speaking to is that before we start our learning process, things are pretty simple. Then we start our learning process, it gets really complex, and somewhere along the line it gets very simple again. And with emotions, it's very simple for a 2-year-old. I feel angry, and so I'm going to yell at you, or punch you, or— and then there's the complexity of actually learning what those emotions are, what's happening, identifying them in your body, feeling them, expressing them, expressing them in a way that doesn't hurt people, letting them move without resistance, finding out that they're very similar to one another, finding out that you can love all of them. Getting to the other side is, wow, you just have emotions again, and it's just— they're just fluid, except for you're not run by them. You're not controlled by them, you're not hurting other people with them. So the only way to do that is to actually learn how to feel the fear. So if you have a fear response, feel it and invite it in. Don't put it at anybody. And most fear is not wanting to feel something, which is pretty cool when you think about it. Like, you know, I'm scared that I'm gonna get fired. But if I told you, hey, if you get fired, you're going to feel awesome, would you, would you be scared of being fired anymore? So it's really us not wanting to have emotions that we're, we're at the core very scared of. And, and when I say feel the fear, I mean welcome it. I really mean like invite it in, breathe it in.

What's a good way to tell in the moment if we're working on empathy and How do we tell if what we're feeling in the moment is true empathy and not one of these coping mechanisms or distortions? And another one that comes up is sympathy. There's a lot about how sympathy and empathy are different and often confused.

Yeah, it's a wonderful question. The main thing is, are you putting yourself outside? It's not quite outside, it's above or— Yeah, I guess it's above the other person. That's often sympathy and empathy. The difference is in when you're putting yourself above the other person, like subtle ways, like you want to fix them, but you know, for you to fix them, you have to be less broken, or you want to like help them not feel it, you know, which is assuming that like not— you're not feeling it is the better solution.

Um, so right, and that means buying into their story and being with them in the story.

Like, oh yeah, yeah, fuck that guy. Exactly. So, so it's just you're with them, and, and when you're with somebody the way that, you know, we all want to be with, it's like we're supporting, we are with, but we are not saving. There's this great phrase, uh, I think it was from an Aboriginal community or a native community in South America, um, and says, hey, if you're here to help me, no thank you, but if you're here to work together on our mutual freedom Let's get to work. And that's really the essence of it.

Another thing that happens a lot is that being empathic is often associated with being manipulable or easily taken for an emotional ride. And how could it be that deepening our empathy in the ways that we've been talking about makes us less likely to fall into a fear response and abandon our needs or our boundaries?

Yeah, right. There's— there's— you get that fear a lot from people. They're like, oh, if I empathize, then I'm gonna fall for them. And I think that what they're, they're thinking about is that there's that person who's like fully into the other person's reality and they, they've lost themselves in it. And if you do that, yeah, you're, you're more likely to be, um, taken advantage of. I mean, if, if that's what the person wants to do on the other side or is capable of doing. But, you know, in all cases, we don't want to feel something if we're, if we're allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of, right? So I'm going to sell you, you know, this magic pill and it's going to make you skinny in 2 days, right? Like, if you buy that, it's because you don't want to feel something anymore, or you definitely want to feel something. So there is something that you want to feel or scared of feeling, to allow yourself to be taken advantage of. And to have empathy, it really requires you to be willing to feel whatever is arising for yourself and that other person. So it actually prevents you from getting taken advantage of because you're welcoming of everything and you're not trying to get rid of it. And it doesn't matter whether you're non-empathetic or like, you know, where it's like, I'm not going to feel that person. That means you don't want to feel shit. It means that you can be taken advantage of pretty easily. I mean, just look at the most non-empathetic people on our planet, and they are the most likely to be manipulated by politicians or, you know, authorities or advertising. And then the other side of that is someone who's totally like in that other person's world, and then they're going to sacrifice themselves for it. But if you're actually like, oh, I can feel you, I can be with you, and whatever you throw at me, I can feel, I can be with. What makes you need to do anything that is contrary to your truth.

Yeah, it seems another example of that is, you know, in a business relationship where somebody's coming at you with a bunch of emotion and making you responsible for something that you're not responsible for. Well, if you're, if you're with them in that emotion but you're like buying into their full story, then you're gonna think that they're entirely right. You're gonna lose your boundaries and be taken for a ride. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, if you agree with— if somebody thinks that you're bad and you get locked into their emotion, then you start thinking you're bad. Yeah, that's exactly a great place where you're going to be taken advantage of by somebody who doesn't think they're taking advantage of you. It's by somebody who feels like they're a victim in that moment, typically. Right.

So back to what you were saying about the people who are, you know, the least empathic are the ones that are most likely to be taken for a ride. Many of us simply don't seem to feel emotions in others as much as we'd like. And when we start doing this kind of work is when we start to notice this. When I started to work with you, I experienced certain emotions in others when we were doing exercises, kind of like I was watching them as an ant colony. Like I could see and recognize the patterns, but I wasn't in it with them. Like, oh, I didn't have an alcoholic father. That's not my problem. Like I can see what that does in you and now I can see your problem and I think I can try to analyze how to fix you. And how can we tell the difference between observing someone's experience in a non-empathic way and genuinely being with them.

Yeah, the body is a telltale sign here. I mean, I think I remember that when we were working together and you were doing that, and I believe I came up and shook you a couple of times. I went, hugla hugla hugla, and then you could feel a different way. There's a rigidity that happens in the body when you are trying not to feel, no matter how you're trying not to feel, whether it's by creating distance or disassociation, which is somewhat of what you were doing, um, being the watcher or, or wanting it to stop, any one of them, it just creates rigidity in the system. So if you— and this often happens in the belly, shoulders, jaw is locked. Oftentimes when, when I do a workshop like this one, I'll walk around and I'll like hit people's jaws so that like tap their jaws to remind them like, oh, they're holding all this tight, or their belly is really tight. So that's the main way, is to keep your body loose and you'll have to feel. Our feelings are a muscular thing. Our feelings live in our muscles. If you're the person who was told you can't get angry and you are not angry all the time now, and anytime anger comes up, you either like give it to yourself or suppress it really badly, your muscles have to contract in such a way and become distorted in such a way. It's why there's a whole science behind just watching how somebody walks into a room. You can tell, like, a tremendous amount of their upbringing, you know. Like, once, once you know what you're looking for and you've experienced it yourself, you can— the way a person's face is, you can tell what emotions they want to feel or they don't want to feel by the way they hunch their shoulders, by the way they tuck their butt, by the way that they hold their lips, how they purse them when certain things come up. Like, they're— it's— it is why we have body language and it's why we have microexpressions.

Yeah, something I've noticed over, over doing this work is that, um, I've started to detect when, when somebody's disconnecting from me in a conversation, I can roll back a little bit and recognize that I had actually disconnected from them. And then they're like, they're responding to that. Yeah. And it's, it's as though the feeling for them is the difference between being with a friend, with a good friend who's there with them in their experience, and being with a shrink. Who's psychoanalyzing them. Yeah, I think that happens a lot for people, for people who want to be there to help others. A lot of it comes from, you know, wanting to deal with their own, their own pain, their own history. So I think this happens a lot in like therapeutic communities where people take the therapeutic role, but they're really analyzing and they're not being empathic.

Yeah, it happens definitely in some places there, and it happens just with a lot of people who find themselves like the savior or helper of their group of friends. You'll see a lot of that happen. And, and the truth is, what sometimes what that is, is they're trying to manage their life by managing other people's emotional states. You know, like, if, right, if you feel happy, I'll be happy. If you, if you're angry, if you're not angry, I'll be happy. You know, if you're in a good mood, I'm in a good mood. And, um, and then A, it doesn't work, and, and B, you can't change people's emotional states and see it's just far more enjoyable to be with them in the emotional state.

Yeah, yeah. Which, which comes back to that self-empathy thing we were talking about. Like, as I've experienced, my, my ability to actually have empathy with others has directly grown from my ability to actually feel that equivalent feeling in myself. Yeah, that's right.

That's exactly how it works. It's our capacity to love the parts of ourselves is directly correlated to our capacity to love the parts of other people and other people in general.

Yeah. Sometimes being empathic with somebody and holding a highly charged emotion can leave us with a sort of static residue in our system that can linger or put us on tilt and takes, takes time for integration. Yeah. Um, or just leave us, leave us feeling that thing for days. Um, and for some people this is really strong. Yeah, yeah, um, the empaths, the self-identified empaths, will just avoid certain situations because they're like, whoa, I just can't, I can't handle that energy. How can we navigate this and be deepening our empathy without closing ourselves off or avoiding situations, especially if we're frequently going from one high-energy interaction to another in business or something else?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to learn that really the hard way, um, for me, you know, when I started coaching people and, and, you know, the depth in which the coaching can happen and I would go from that to like a conversation with negotiating lawyers over like, over like points on a contract. And so, and then back into a coaching session. So I had to go into these like big, highly charged things one right after the other. And similarly, when I do like the 7-day really deep retreats, it's like one like emotional baseball bat after another in the best possible way. It's not like— with real baseball bats, right? But not, not obviously not hurting anybody. And so, yeah, it's something that I really had to learn. You know, the main thing is avoid it. And the way you avoid it isn't by not feeling the emotion. It's by being in your body, right? So it's, it's just putting some of your attention in your body while you're with other people and their emotions. So you're not losing yourself. That's a huge thing. And If you do that, as you get better at that, it's like it— that takes care about 70 or 80% of the problem. And then the other stuff, it's really about grounding. It's about staying grounded, realizing what's yours and what's not yours. Um, and your body and your breath is the best way to do this. So releasing whatever emotion residue you have, letting the tears flow, shaking it off, grounding yourself in the different ways that people can ground themselves. There's some Tai Chi moves that can do that, yoga moves that ground you. Um, there's—

or just asking, is this mine? You know, that was a really good one from earlier.

Yeah, is this mine? There's some things to calm the nervous system down, different breath. So there's all sorts of things you can look into. Any— if you go into any kind of system that says, how do I ground, no matter what kind of system, from, you know, functional medicine to, to this, you can just find those things and they'll work really well. I like— my personal favorites are like deep breath walking barefoot, sitting in silence, meditation, those things. I feel very grounded in those things. Massage. I love massage. Massage will help me feel grounded probably quicker than anything else.

What if you're going straight from like a sprint planning meeting where everybody's start— got in an argument, start yelling at each other, and you're carrying that energy straight into a performance review and you really want not to take that out on the person that you're reviewing? Yeah, yeah, if you got like 5 minutes between them. Yeah.

So first, I wouldn't buy into the story that you have to. So I would say like, I'm not prepared for this meeting right now emotionally, and I'd rather give you the, the actual emotional attention that you deserve, so let's postpone it. That's one thing, obviously. Like, so for instance, if there is a big fight in the sprint meeting, I, I would probably enjoy it because I could be with— I could be with the anger, the energy, and I'd see like, wow, look at all these people who really give a shit. They really care. They really want it done right, or they wouldn't be fighting. Um, and then my—

way better than a bunch of apathetic, right? Exactly.

Checked out people. Exactly. And, and, and because I would be enjoying the tension, it would also change the dynamic in the room of the anger, because so much of the fighting that happens is based on a level of resistance. Because unresisted fighting, you know, feels very much like clarity and decisiveness and and a deep care. So, um, so, so again, staying in your own physical sensation is a huge part to prevent it. But I mean, literally just shake your body for, you know, 2 or 3 minutes between the meetings can work. Um, taking deep breaths can work. Uh, getting in touch with what's aware of your emotional state instead of your emotional state can work. Yawning 10, 20 times in a row can work. Having a, you know, a quick cry— crying doesn't take very long, can be a minute or two.

All those things can work. Can you, can you tell me a couple of stories about how empathy transformed a situation for you in a business context, something like this or different?

Yeah, uh, yeah, you know, I remember a time when I was fundraising, um, and, you know, we're— I can't remember, so, you know, somewhere in like that $10 million range of fundraising. And I just noticed that I was with the person who I was talking to, and I noticed, um, that they were getting distant. And, um, and I, I just said, wow, I noticed that you're getting distant. I noticed something turned you off. What happened? And that is what allowed for a far deeper conversation about what they were looking for what about my attitude had scared them, um, we could address it directly. Uh, I could— I got to learn that I was objectifying the person probably a little bit more than I would want to, and, and they could learn that they were in a past deal, not in the current deal in front of us. So that, that's a good example of one. Same thing raising money. I have been able to empathize with the people on the other side of the table to realize that, oh, they see me as, uh, they've objectified me, or they see me as an employee rather than a partner, and I don't want that. I think investors who see, um, their investees as employees, I think that they are dangerous, and you can sense it, you know, by the way that they keep a distance from you or how they hold themselves emotionally with you instead of the way somebody who holds you as a partner. So that has prevented me from having some really bad investors that way. Another example is like selling. Like oftentimes you see in a sales process, um, a customer goes into resistance and then the salesperson tries to convince them, which puts them into more resistance, instead of saying, being like, well, I know, I noticed something is not working for you. What's going on? Because if this isn't working for you, I don't want you do it. And if it's not working for you, there's a potential there's a misunderstanding, so I'd like to clarify it. But I don't want you doing something you don't want to do, because then I just have an unhappy customer, and you know, that's not good for business, right? Um, you can't really do that unless you can feel the person.

Um, what are some, uh, some other examples, like working with peers, for example? Yeah, or teams within a team. Yeah, yeah.

So for instance, um, you know, I hear something from managers all the time where they're talking about— they're like, you know, We all had alignment and then like nobody did it. We all agreed, we all sat in the meeting, we all agreed, and nobody did it. And I'll always say like, what's in that meeting? Did it feel like there was— did you feel like they were excited? No. I'm like, okay, so what stopped you from saying, wow, I don't feel the excitement in the room? What's preventing the excitement? Not— you can't do that with anything besides empathy. So that's a great experience of like if you are addressing the emotional reality instead of just the intellectual reality, because people, like I said, make decisions based on emotions. That's why people can all agree to something in a meeting, but if they're emotionally resistant, they're not going to go and do it. So you can actually just feel into that resistance, feel into where the excitement is, feel into what's being held, where the rigidity is in the room, and, and, and clarify it. And that makes things far more Good. It's the same thing with like product development. You know, we have the, you know, it's a kind of a famous thing where people spend a lot of money on a focus group and then, and the focus group goes, this is great, and then the product fails. Or, or vice versa has happened too. It's because they're asking them emotional issues. They're asking them about emotional decisions through the intellect. And so it's not a perfect, it sometimes works, but it's not a perfect, um, translator, right? It's like, yeah, it's really feeling your customer. It's really feeling what's making that— what makes it important for them to buy it. You know, Henry Ford said, if I gave my customers what they wanted, I would have given them a faster horse. But you put a person behind the car and you see them drive it and what happens to their face, and you see the way people look at them and what happens in their faces. It's pretty clear who's going to buy what.

I've always thought that one was interesting, the faster horse thing, because it's not really what they wanted. If you asked them what they wanted, if you asked them the solution that they thought they would have, like, that would have solved their problem, they might have thought a faster horse. But really what they wanted was better transportation. Yes, exactly.

But that's the exact point, which is that the, um, that the intellect is limited in its capacity to see what the emotions want. Yeah, right. So transportation was horse and feet, you know, at the time. So that was the limitation of the intellectual part of it. But if you got— if you looked at the emotional experience, then you know that there's other solutions.

Yeah, I mean, I think this happens in like product research all the time where The research will be, will be conducted in some way where it's like, okay, do you, what do you like better, the red plastic or the blue plastic? And you'll get an answer and you'll have a meeting where there's a graph that just shows, you know, how much of the market wants this versus the other thing, but you missed the deeper question and the deeper emotional connection to the product. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah. It's why there's a felt sense to great design. You know, you see something that's designed just with beauty and you feel it and you're like, oh, that's, that's beautiful. Not, not just beautiful as in looking, but the design is elegant and there's a, there's a felt sense to that and it makes it appealing to us. And there's no way that you're going to use the intellect to describe that unless you've been trained in design for, you know, years.

So, so how, how will we see our lives and our, our work change as we deepen our ability to feel our emotions and empathize with others? Some of these examples are good, good examples, but what are some other things that would happen in our lives?

Decisions become more clear because we're more likely to feel emotions and be happy to feel emotions. Um, we start, uh, caring for people instead of caretaking them, meaning that we're not trying to make them feel better, we're just being in support of them, and therefore we get that in return as well. You get more people who are happy to be with you. Um, you also see the people around yourself, and you become more and more empowered, right? Like, as you stop fearing all these emotional states, then you just stand in your truth more and more and more. And so there's just a deeper level of empowerment that happens for you and for the people around you. You know, one of these things that I was working with a a CEO of one of the companies, and he, you know, tended towards caretaking. And obviously, because he's caretaking, there's a lot of people that kind of fall into that victim thing in his company. And there was kind of like this victim mentality in the company because he felt responsible for them. And as that changed for him, as he could be with people instead of taking care of people, all of a sudden the decisions that could empower them could start to be seen. So instead of coming in and saying like, here's how we're going to fix the world, he would say, how do you want to fix the world? Clearly you're unhappy. How are you going to fix it? You know, he would empower people to fix their own problems and changed everything for his company.

You know, you can just use my name when you're talking about me.

That wasn't you. You were not the person in my mind when I was saying that.

I know, but I just like felt it as like, yep, that's exactly been my journey. Yeah. So what, what else happens? Are there— a lot of times when we do these kinds of practices, there are shifts in our lives that are like short-term uncomfortable or destabilizing. Is there anything like that that would happen with, with practicing deeper empathy?

Yeah, as the emotions start to get felt and the resistance isn't worked through, it can be a bit turbulent. You know, it's not the emotions that are uncomfortable, it's the resistance to them. So um, there can be a little bit of turbulence. There can be, you know, moments of tears where you would prefer that there wasn't tears. Um, they don't happen very often. They're pretty rare. Like, people kind of are like, oh my God, I'm gonna be crying all over the place. And it's kind of more like, oh God, I cried at this one place, and, and actually somebody came up to me and said something sweet. But yeah, it can be a little bit turbulent. Um, there's this also this idea that like if I allow my emotions, then they're gonna take over me and control me. It's like, it's the projection that you've been controlling your emotions, so you think they're going to control you. It doesn't happen like that. I've never seen anybody at all, of the thousands of people I've seen go through this process, I've never seen any of them like, are like, I'm controlled by emotions now. Yeah, yeah. Damn you, Joe. Exactly. Never has, never happened. Um, so I'd say that, um, the biggest thing is what we've really harped on, on this, on this talk is, you know, if you empathize without, with losing yourself, that can be, uh, that can be really damaging. So learning how to be in your own body while you're empathetic is like so critical. I just even recommend like, hey, for the rest of the week, put some of your attention into your physical body during every conversation. See what that does to your world. It'll rock your world if you do that for every conversation for a week. It'll just rock your world. And it's also, I just say it's important to take it slow. You know, it's like, I would say it's like if the emotional tube is kinked, you know, you just like be gentle with the unkinking, take it slow.

There's the wisdom in the taking it slow. And there's also another side of that that I can see, like, A lot of times these emotions are stacked on each other. And so you get beneath one of them and you let yourself feel it. Like, you might get yourself to feel the anger, but then if you don't feel the hurt underneath the anger, then a completely different thing starts controlling you. Yeah. And so you get the disruptive thing going on in your life and you're entering another pattern. And so there's like being gentle with yourself and taking it slow. And then there's also just like being curious about how far down it goes. And what's beneath this one that I'm now feeling.

I would definitely agree with that. To think that there's an end is no good. It's not going to be servicing your journey at all. So seeing it as endless, being curious about it, bringing the other, you know, being vulnerable with yourself about your emotional state, being impartial with how you feel. You can use all of those tools and use it for this empathy.. And it might upheave, and it might be like, you know, you might find yourself bawling and crying and shaking. And all that can happen while being gentle with yourself.

What are some ways that empathy can go, like, wrong? Um, what does it look like when it's, uh, if we're like trying to be empathic, we're not quite there, so it's shallow, or it's sort of false? Or how could it be used directly as a weapon if somebody, you know, starts using these practices and they're like, oh wow, I could actually use this to manipulate people. What happens then? How does that look? Creepy.

Like, you can see it, like, you know, like, the difference between a good interviewer and a bad interviewer is one's using real empathy and one is faking it. And you can tell. It makes your skin crawl on some level, you know. So it might work for some people, but it's not— it's going to only work on a small percentage of them, whereas Empathy is, is, creates connection consistently. You can use empathy as a tool. They do all these skills are based on that, you know, mimic their body language and nod yes when people speak and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Mirror the last 3 words of the thing they said.

Use their name in the front of sentences and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you can do all that stuff, but if you're not being empathy, it comes off as false, fake, and gross. And we've all been with that person. But if you could do all that stuff with deep empathy, and then it's, it's actually quite appealing, but it's really the empathy that's appealing. And I think that the reason that those tools work when they do work sometimes is because they actually hack the mind into empathy. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, they are disarming. Yeah. And if the intent is to disarm, then it can get you closer to it. Yeah. Disarm yourself, that is, not to disarm the other person as a trick. Yeah. So what are a couple of like summary bullet points on how all of what we've discussed would apply to a view conversation in this practice and with, uh, with the rest of this course?

Yeah, well, one of the things that the clearly thing is that you can ask questions. You can ask how, what questions, um, that are based on nonverbal cues on empathy. Like, oh wow, it feels like you distanced yourself right there. What happened? Or you can say, it looks like you don't agree with that. What's going on? Or what's happening with you right now? Or how did, how did that feel? You can ask questions like that. People generally don't. They'll stay up on the intellectual and they won't ask questions down in the, in the emotional.

And in a curious way, not, not—

yes, not—

oh wait, I saw you disconnect there. I saw you disconnect. I know it. Tell me, tell me what empathy is. An attack.

Um, yeah, that's right. Um, also, uh, basically you'll notice that when you have empathy with someone, they're more likely to be open because they feel that you're with them. And you can't do anything to show to them, you're just empathetic and it just occurs. Um, like I said earlier, there's this creepy thing where people know you're managing them, and when they do, they back off. And so you don't have as much data, you don't get as much truth, you don't get to see the problem as it is, you don't get their ideas for solutions. So with empathy, you get all that stuff. You get more data and more ideas for solutions.

Or the solutions you get from them are actually their solutions to get you to stop managing them. Exactly. Exactly.

And also, if you're in empathy, you can catch yourself being partial, right? Like if you're using empathy and you see somebody like, uh, I have an issue with you, you're like, oh, Wow, I was being partial. Like, I'll catch my own partiality from being empathetic to their response to me.

Right, like the way I was describing earlier when I mentioned, when I catch somebody disconnect, like rolling back and be like, wait a minute. Yeah. Oh, okay.

I see what I did there. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. As we close, um, I'd love for you to, to tell us about an impactful experience that you've had that caused the deepest increase in your empathy for others in the shortest amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. I can.

I want to give you two. The first one was I was having this experience where I realized that I really just did not want to be with people who were having meaningless conversations. And it just was like so annoying. Like, you know, I was driving 65 miles an hour. Really? 65? Yeah, 65 miles an hour. Down to Santa Barbara, like, like, uh, it was so frustrating for me. I'm like, what is it that I don't want to feel? What is it that's happening for them, for me, that I don't want to feel? And, and just open myself up to it. It was awkward, you know, I'd be weeping in these conversations that were like seemingly benign. And, um, I don't know, 2 or 3 weeks of that, something, maybe a month of that, and, um The personal recognition that came through it was, I was— it was so critical to my sense of self that I had to be valuable, and that the idea that I might be spending time where I wasn't valuable, it was so hard on my system. I didn't want to feel that kind of sense of worthlessness, and that was my internal thing. And then to have the freedom to be worthless, to be like, oh yeah, I like— I'm happy to be worthless. And I'm happy to be of value. And having that freedom was tremendous. And then my capacity to immediately be with people or having that level of conversation happened. And, and what I realized was even in that level of conversation, there's different forms of connection going on. There's different ways that people are connecting that aren't verbal, that aren't about the immediate intellectual thing that's up front. And then, um, I think the— this one wasn't as quick, but it was bigger for me, which was, you know, getting in touch with hand-in-hand parenting, which is really, um, one of the main tools that I learned empathy from. And one of the tools in that is like, it's called Parenting by Connection, and it allows parents to be deeply connected with their kids, kids to feel deeply connected. And the thought process is when kids feel connected, they naturally want to behave in a way that's, that's enriching for themselves and the family. And all of the tribulations that we feel from children is just them being out of connection. So how do you get them back into connection? And one of the tools— they have 5 very simple tools— and one of the tools is, is stay listening. It's like allowing the kids to have temper tantrums and, and being with them in that temper tantrum and even encouraging it to move through and making sure it doesn't get stuck. And, uh, and, you know, I was not good with my— a lot of my emotions when I started doing Hand in Hand Parenting. And I got good with them really quick. And all of a sudden I had a tremendous amount of emotional freedom that I didn't have before. And all of a sudden my decision-making got so clear because I couldn't be with my child's temper tantrum until I could be with my own. I couldn't be with my child's anger until I could be with my own, or their tears until I could be with my own. And so that process of empathizing and being with my children gave me so much more freedom.

Huh. How did these two stories impact the, uh, your ability to have value for people?

I don't care. Um, if I— I mean, if I'm to look at it, seemingly I'm, I'm more able to be more valuable to them because I'm— I can be with them in a deeper way now, and I'm not judging them or myself. So that seems like that's probably more valuable. But the bigger, the bigger answer is I don't— it doesn't matter to me anymore.

You know, it's like, I love, I love that paradox from, you know, from that, like, the driving wound of your first story. Yeah. To just not caring anymore, actually having that impact.

Yeah. Oh man, that was a great conversation.

Thanks so much, Brett. Yeah. Thank you.

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