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Sympathy is when you feel pity for someone else. Empathy is what you feel the emotions someone else is feeling. Ex: Mary’s husband died in a car crash. Sympathy: That’s hard. I feel bad for her. Well, I’m going to watch my TV show now. Empathy: Wow, that’s hard. I feel bad for her. Well, I’m going to go over there now and cook dinner for her / do the dishes. She shouldn’t be alone at a time like this. For some, feeling sympathy might be the first step to building empathy. For others, sympathy might be a wall that blocks you from walking over the bridge to the other side to feel what someone else feels, to stand on the same side, together. Notice it’s not about feeling the right or wrong thing. It’s about building the habit of responding to your feelings with action that can potentially alleviate someone else’s suffering. It doesn’t matter where you start. But it doesn't matter where you end up. Cross the bridge. Get to empathy.

How I relate to you, influences how you relate to me. If you want to change how others are relating to you, then examine how you are relating to them.

Your doctor tells you to get healthy. She says specifically your body needs the vitamins that can only come from eating broccoli. You can not buy junk food when you go to the store. You can take the stairs instead of the elevator. [The easy stuff] You can start going to the gym. You can give up smoking. [The hard stuff] All of these things are positive but you're still not getting the vitamins you need. At a certain point, you realize there is no way to get around it: to get to where you want to go you have to do the hard work. You have to eat your broccoli. Anything really worth doing is going to be hard work, and this will absolutely require you to do things you don’t currently do, which will for sure feel uncomfortable for a while. This is the “hard truth” we must all face if we seek to make change of any kind. If it was easy, everyone would already be doing it. To get to where you want to go you must figure out when and where the broccoli will get eaten, and understand that you...

There are two forces: fear and love. “Intuition" is a better word for love here. Living out your Intuition is acting on what you know to be true. Living out your Fear is acting on what could go wrong. Fear is always there. We do not eliminate fear. We learn to manage it, to coexist with it. Fear is a friend who is going on a road trip with you. Fear can be telling you positive messages that you should listen to, like when you’re worried about running out of gas or driving off a cliff. Fear can be a good friend to talk with, a good perspective to consider. The problem is when you let fear drive the car. Or when fear gets to sit in the front seat, and every time your intuition hits the gas to go forward, fear pulls up the emergency brake and slows you down.  We are at our best when intuition is driving our car, and fear is in the backseat, along for the ride. The key question: who is driving the vehicle?

The principle of subsidiarity states that issues should be dealt with at the smallest, most immediate (local) level that is capable of solving them. This style of organization was made popular by the Romans and the Catholic Church. The structure protects from over-centralization.  When things get too big, they tend to break. We often wrongly crave a greater scale and bigger size. We fail to realize that the benefits of economies of scale can be outweighed by the costs of how fragile big things become. Bigger equals more fragile. Smaller means the agility to move quickly, be nimble, and experience more possibilities.

After you interact with someone, how do you feel - drained or recharged? Some people have low self-worth. They feel bad about themselves and are insecure. Their mission becomes to drag you down to their level. It could be negative comments, criticism, or attacks. Whatever way you slice it, their insecurities are coming out, and they are lashing out at you. Remember, you cannot control what the other person thinks or feels. Focus on yourself. Create a personal policy (and habit) of dismissing the negative people from your life. Do not give them your energy or attention.