Picture credit - Encyclopaedia Britannica
Day 58 - Empathy
6 June, 2020
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sirurp@gmail.com
My learning for the day
Today I want to summarise two movies on Empathy. Thank you Paul Morello for your recommendation; Thank you Vedanth for suggesting three movies Badla, Irada and Bajrangi Bhaijaan for this post (Vedanth,13, is my friend Karthikeyan’s son. His act of going through all the movies he has watched and identifying movies around empathy is in itself an empathetic act!)
Coincidentally, both the movies are about someone helping others to reach their homes.
Movie 1 - E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
The Plot
A great Spielberg movie on the topic of empathy.
A small group of alien botanists secretly visit Earth under cover of night to gather plant specimens in a Californian forest. When government agents appear on the scene, the aliens flee in their spaceship, but in their haste, one of them is left behind, surrounded by an intimidatingly strange and unknown environment.
Alone and fearful, the marooned being is fortunate to be discovered by a ten-year-old boy, Elliott, who, after the initial shock, decides to take him in.
Little by little, a bond forms between Elliott and ET. As our planet becomes a prison brimming with dangers and government agents, Elliott and his team of rescuers work hard to find a way to reunite ET with his otherworldly family.
Ask yourself these questions to ‘understand’ empathy
- What can I do to help newcomers and foreigners feel comfortable and safe?
- What kind of skills or talents do people from other countries or cultures living in my neighborhood have?
- Have I ever met someone I couldn’t ‘talk’ to, but, yet could communicate? What was that experience like? How would I describe it to others?
- Have I ever had a friendship with someone totally different? How were they different? How did we both bridge that gap to make an authentic, deep connection?
Movie 2 - Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015)
The Plot
This movie is about an Indian young man’s journey trying to reach a lost young mute Pakistani girl back to her homeland to reunite her with her family.
The hero (Bajrangi) didn’t know how to reach the girl to her home. She was deaf mute and too young to communicate from where she came.
Bajrangi’s sheer will to help the child gives him power to tackle all the hazards - the objections from his father, hurdles by the government officials of both the countries and even the mob suspecting foul play.
The learning
Empathy has no boundaries. It transcends them. This movie shows two boundaries - the first one is a territorial boundary (the hero helping someone from an enemy country) and the second one is the religious boundary (a Hindu hero helping a muslim child)
Empathy can give you tremendous inner power to face all possible hurdles
When you put all your efforts to help someone, you get support and help from unknown quarters (like the Pakistani reporter Chand supported Bajrangi in his endeavour)
My learning so far on this topic
Day 8 post - 5 People Who Changed the World By Taking Compassion to the Extreme
Day 18 post - How brands are using empathy to enhance marketing
Day 28 post - Types of unempathetic people
Day 38 - Two TED talks - Trash cart Superheroes & Compassion and the true meaning of empathy
Day 48 - Two books - Well-Designed: How to Use How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love & Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy
What is Empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
This is a nice quote that explains the difference between Empathy and Sympathy -
“Empathy is walking a mile in somebody else's moccasins. Sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt.” ― Rebecca O'Donnell
This is what Webster Dictionary says -
Sympathy - an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other
Empathy - the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
Compassion - sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it
How to improve this skill?
Set a goal to become a go-to person by mastering the art and science of Empathy.
Follow the LAST model to build your personal brand as a Guru of Empathy.
Learn - Invest time in learning different frameworks/ models/ techniques of Empathy
Apply -
Identify a model suitable to you
Create a template to document the flow of the process
Find opportunities to use the selected method/ template
Maintain record/ process flow of every important activities you did with respect to Empathy
Maintain notes of your thoughts/ insights/ failures/ challenges…. to be used for sharing/ training others
Share - Share the insights captured in step 2 above in a planned manner (social media posts, blogs, videos, study notes…)
Train - Generate opportunities to train your peers and team members so that, over time, your organization benefits from your efforts
Purpose of this document
I took a 66 day challenge to study Life Skills last year (10 April 2019). To my astonishment, I succeeded in studying for 66 days one skill a day.
My objectives of learning these skills were - To strengthen my mind to face life’s challenges with ease, To use these skills in my worklife for a better performance, To use these skills in my personal life for enriching my relationships, To open new possibilities to surprise myself.
This is my next 66 day challenge (from 10 April 2020) - To share my Life Skills learning with my social media friends.
I pray that my toil helps you in your success journey.
What are Life Skills?
UNICEF defines Life skills as - psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills
- cognitive skills for analyzing and using information,
- personal skills for developing personal agency and managing oneself,
- inter-personal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Which LifeSkills are covered?
The World Health Organisation identified these basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures:
1. Decision-making
2. Problem-solving
3. Creative thinking
4. Critical thinking
5. Communication
6. Interpersonal skills
7. Self-awareness
8. Empathy
9. Coping with emotions
10. Coping with stress.
Some trivia
‘Life skills’ was never part of the school curriculum. WHO/ UNESCO mandated academia to teach these skills in all schools across the globe in 1993.
Different countries educate their children in these skills with different objectives
- Zimbabwe and Thailand - prevention of HIV/AIDS
- Mexico - prevention of adolescent pregnancy
- United Kingdom - child abuse prevention
- USA - prevention of substance abuse and violence
- South Africa and Colombia - positive socialization of children.
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