We all love vacations, and I am one of them. So much that I have found a way to have a lot of time for vacations whenever I want. However, I don’t travel much, so I feel happy and joyful. I can get a vacation anytime I am with anyone. It’s simple, and through practice, you can also take vacations regularly.
The dictionary defines empathy as the ability to understand the feelings of others and share them with them. What was not mentioned is that empathy provides you with one of the best, shortest, and most familiar vacations. Years ago, I was training in a course called neuro-linguistic training. It was interesting and related to the way the brain works, how you think, and why some people are good at things while others are not.
NLP provides a blueprint for Excellence, which is something we all need besides vacations. Using NLP, I discovered a shortcut to empathy, and I can teach it to you very quickly. The more you apply the steps of empathy well, the more you can naturally and easily get out of your world and move into someone else’s world. One of the amazing things about practicing empathy is that it not only helps you connect with another person, but it reveals several potentials you have.
Explaining empathy:
There are 3 steps to mastering empathy:
The first step:
Really easy and fun. Try to distract yourself and focus your attention on another person. You can do this by listening to someone while looking at him. As your focus shifts to him, your fears will disappear, as well as any social discomfort or performance anxiety. When you do this, you can be nervous or anxious if you focus your attention only on yourself.
Take your attention away from yourself during a small interpersonal vacation by getting to know another person. Practice diverting your attention away from you. You can focus your attention on another person, a book, or a tree. You can also focus on anything you want. During the day, one’s concentration is divided into two parts: focus on oneself and on the outside world.
As for the first step of empathy, you should turn your attention to something else to practice empathy for another person. You can turn your attention to someone you know well or to a stranger. It is often easy for you to start with someone you don’t know well; this way, you won’t have many opinions about them or shared experiences with them.
The second step:
On the unlimited vacation that empathy provides is to ask yourself the following three questions and notice what will happen:
- What does this person think?
- What does this person feel?
- How does this person control his body now?
Imagine what the person you have focused your attention on is thinking. You don’t have to answer the question, but be curious about what he is thinking. While curiosity kills its owner, it is useful sometimes; so be curious about what the other person is thinking. Curiosity enhances empathy, and if you get answers to the question related to what the other person is thinking, then you are on the right track. Then ask yourself what he is feeling, and it’s not important to come up with a specific answer, just feeling curious is the first step to empathy. As for the third question, it’s a little different, where you should note how this person sits or stands. In this case, you will adopt the position of his body. If he holds his arms, you may cross your arms, and if his head is tilted forward, you may also do the same, taking a position similar to the person you are talking to greatly increases your empathy. You can start empathy by taking a similar position first and then asking yourself what he is thinking or feeling.
When you ask yourself what the other person is thinking or feeling, you may come up with the answer: “I have no idea what he is thinking or feeling,” and this is normal at first. But it will not take long for you to understand his thoughts and feelings. The more you practice empathy by following these steps and feel curious about each of the three questions, the more vacations you will get, and the more fun it will be to move on to the third step.
The third step:
It’s really simple and can be incredibly rewarding. It’s turning your attention away from others and back to yourself. In other words, the third step is to focus your attention on yourself. When you focus your attention on yourself, you will discover that you not only took a vacation but learned something about the world in which the other person lives. You will probably be happy to regain focus on yourself, but at the same time, you will be happy because you got a vacation.
In conclusion:
You can practice empathy anywhere, at any time, and through empathy, you will get a vacation and get to know yourself and others more. You will have given someone attention too, which is a great reward for him, and you will benefit from practicing directing your attention.
In today’s changing world, people often don’t get enough attention. So this simple empathy exercise enhances your ability to direct your attention to where you want. While practicing empathy, you will be able to focus your attention, so you will not only get a vacation but will gain new skills and strengths that will help you a lot.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash
