Mastering a Skill

There are, of course many skills that people should have and do not or do have and don't practice. One of these such skills would be empathy. Empathy defined by the American Heritage Dictionary is the identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.* This is such an important skill to master that if one is not careful in mastering this skill one may go their entire life without it and never be able to communicate effectively with others.

This skill is needed by all people for many different reasons but, the result will always be the same. The result of successfully mastering this skill is the ability to understand how another person feels and communicate with that person in a way that shows compassion and understanding. Not only should everyone have the ability to utilize empathy on a daily basis but should also be able to understand that empathy is not the same as sympathy. Sympathy is the ability to feel compassion or another emotional feeling without actually having the understanding of the situation the person is in or actually having the same situation happen to you at one point in your life or another. The two should not be confused, one is the an actual understanding of feelings and the other is feeling based and no understanding is present.

Empathy, is necessary in all aspects of daily life. For instance, all major corporations and even medium sized businesses have conferences and team building exercises that deal exclusively with empathy and educating employees on how to practice it to make it a regular part of their lives. The businesses hosting the conferences on empathy know that to excel in customer service one must be able to show empathy to the customer. This enhances the reliability and overall customer's satisfaction with the company and can help the employee gain promotions, this is because the company desires employees that can identify with the customer and assist the customer effectively. Just being able to show empathy is not necessarily what makes the customer's experience better, its the fact that someone is showing that they care and then actually helps the customer. Just showing empathy is not enough...but its the foundation of true customer service.

In life empathy is not only desirable but a needed skill, since most people feel like the problems and issues they face in life are their own and no one actually understand what they are going through. Empathy allows one person to truthfully and effectively show understanding of someones situation and how they are feeling about something. This helps in so many ways. Say for example your best friend is stressed out about grades in school, you can empathize with that person since you yourself have been stressed about school at one time or another and understand how they feel. This can truly be a lifesaving skill when one person is depressed and threatens to harm themselves, displaying empathy to this person can show them that they are not alone and that you understand what they are going through. Note, empathy should be used in truthfulness and never overused