Recording, and the AI turn that on. So, yeah, I guess we've been starting to do our setting the vision intention is to build the empathy movement to make mutual empathy a core cultural value. And this group is the intention is to develop and document the holistic empathy definition model. If that sounds okay with you all. And then I thought we could hear a couple of things. If you have anything to add, is to review the project to do list. So there's a link there for kind of an overall to do. You know my to do list. I wanted to review that. And then I also have this defining empathy emotions diagram that I wanted to show you. Kind of get your your feedback on too. Is there anything else you all would like to add? Is agenda?
Where do you have, okay, right at the Okay, all right, yeah, I
don't have anything to add to that. You are so organized,
trying to be, yeah. How did you see that in notebook. Lm, I,
yeah, I did take the time to listen to that. That was, I love those podcasts that it can create. It's crazy. Yeah, that was a lot of fun to listen to that. And I think that it, it pretty accurately captured what we've been talking about,
yeah, what is it that you're talking about here? Let me
bring it up. I can find it. Notebook. So Google has this, this app, I guess, called notebook LM, so, and this is it, and you create a project, and you you input, so I've input all of our recordings, and so it's like a little AI. It's analyzing all of these discussions that we've had, you know, the seven or so recordings, and it creates these reports. And, you know, it's like, here's one. It creates a, you know, map, a map of it that it creates the, you know, these are trace, these different reports about what we talked about, and there's a bunch of a whole bunch of me, and then it creates this conversation. It's not gonna Wow. It
blows my mind. And then, have you ever tried interacting with the conversation
I have a little crazy.
You can ask it questions, and it'll respond to you,
and they talk to you, yeah, crazy. So here's me see if what it does is it, it creates a conversation between a guy and a man and a woman. It's sort of like a podcast style, and they talked about all, all the stuff in the in the in the analysis that it's made right.
Welcome everyone to another deep dive today. We're tackling empathy.
You hear that this one's going to be a wild ride. It is. It
really is. And we're doing it, you know, thanks to a listener request. Someone out there wanted to know more about this big kind of confusing world of empathy.
Yeah, and they specifically pointed us towards some really fascinating discussions happening on Edwin empathy rutschs YouTube channel,
lots of good stuff with Jody Edwin and some really thought provoking conversations there.
Anyway, gotta stop it there, but it if you're able to, or if I gave the permission to share, but that's the link. I'm not sure if you have. Yeah, I can add you. Daniel. Daniel, anyway, just playing a lot with the different AI and see how we can use that. So okay, so maybe we'll do the overall to do lists, if you have any feedback on that. So let's see. Let me find it to do list. Okay, to do list, yeah, there's a link there. So this is just a to do list I had, you know, for myself is to develop a project group, team group, you know, to work on this project. So, you know, this is kind of the core here. Um. Um, and developed a document for the holistic empathy definition model. And, you know, it's to create a slideshow. I'd like to create some articles, great. Like to create a training course, you know, workshop on this. And, you know, eventually write a book to about the holistic definition model. And then round the model in the empathy circle practice, you know, just so that we can people can personally experience the aspect of empathy or the lack of empathy. And I think this will help spread the empathy circle practice. Since you know, our goal with the empathy center is to teach everyone in the world how to take part and facilitate an empathy circle. And the basic model is, you know, basic empathy, which is, you know, Carl Rogers definition of empathy, which I'm calling basic empathy, self empathy, imaginative empathy and holistic empathy. And I'm really amazed Jody, how we have such a similar understanding of the issues of it real in real alignment. So and then test the the basic empathy model with empathy activist, experts and academics. So what do they think of the model? So I'm actually, next week, meeting with Lou Augusta. He's written, you know, multiple books on empathy. So we're going to be talking about the definition. So I'd like to take the basic definition and, you know, run it and have, you know, talk with other academics about it, and then empathy activists, you know. So I'm setting up like interview dialogs, you know, and empathy Super Friends. This is a group of you know, folks. Maria, Robert, Elif and Peter. Except there's a whole bunch of them. There's like 100 of these people, in order to have the basic model and then kind of check with with them what their thoughts are on it, and also a way of, kind of promoting it. And, you know, there's various issues to to address, like moving from a limited, individualistic perspective to a holistic perspective, moving from, I would say, the inaccurate reason versus feeling dichotomy. You know, I think it's the cognitive affective model. I think kind of want to get away from, from that, more of an integrated model and abstract concept. So it's not, you know, when you talk, when people are talking about empathy, it's very abstract, and it just gets lost and and, you know, really bring it into the empathy circle as a experience. So we can actually experience each of the the the aspects that we're talking about, and then map onto the whole map, the holistic definition model, you know, onto an empathy circle on other definitions. We did that a little bit with your list. Jody, right? You had a bunch of definitions. You know, how does Kyle Rogers work fit in? Marshall Rosenberg, how does the you know, affective, cognitive, empathic concern model fit? There's Dan batson's eight things called empathy. Like a real did a lot of work on defining empathy. Dan Zahav, who's is the phenomenologist, and I thought he has a real good model of how he defined empathy.
I haven't seen that one. I'll have to wait this. Yeah,
he's really the empathy. There's a video I can send that to you. He he's coming from the he's coming from the phenomenologist point of view. And he would only call what Rogers was calling empathy, you know, sensing into someone's experience, as empathy. And he wouldn't like imagine of empathy. He wouldn't consider that, you know, a true empathy. And he also addresses kind of the issues with Dan Batson, not Dan Batson Paul blooms, you know, criticisms, and has a good explanation of, you know, critique of that. There's also the blocks to empathy, like to map those on, and these is in the literature. There's all these blocks that you know come out of some various books are out there. Are on practitioner, you know, who do actually do practitioner empathy, like Thomas Gordon, William Miller, you know, NVC, they have these topics here that are like blocks to empathy. So I want to map those onto the model, and you can actually role play them, you know, in the empathy circle. And
so blocks to Empathy means roadblocks, like standing in the way of empathy.
Yeah, it's, so, it's, it's like, you can see it was advising. So in the empathy circle, you know, you say, oh, you know, I'm really having a hard time. I'm really struggling with, you know, dealing with this and that issue. And instead of saying, Oh, I hear you having, you know, some real struggles, you say, you say, Oh, I think what you should do is this, right, right? That's like a block. The same thing with, with, with, with, agreeing, right? And somebody says, Oh, you know, so and so is a real jerk. Instead of saying, oh, you know, I'm hearing you say, So and so is a jerk, and really sensing into what they're saying, you say, Yeah, I agree with you. That person is a jerk, you know. So, so so there's a whole bunch of these that can be actually role played. And then I want to kind of do other general definitions by high profile people like Obama, you know, like he talked a lot about empathy, and I want to map that on to and I think he, what he's talking about is imaginative empathy, what he really focus on? And then definitions by lay people, I know Jody, you'd asked a lot of sort of lay people, what their definition of empathy is. And academic measurements, you know, go through some of the the tests you know, and say, What the heck are they actually studying and
mapping? Sometimes it blows my mind what they have in those questionnaires.
But yeah, it has nothing to do with empathy. In my view, like, it's just like,
like, emotional reactivity, like I go to pieces in an emergency. I don't understand why that's in an empathy scale.
Crazy, yeah. I mean, what a mess. Yeah. It's like, no wonder. It's like, we're not getting anywhere with this empathy work, because it's such a mess. And then the criticisms you know like to go systematically through the criticisms you know, the against empathy, dark side of empathy, suicidal empathy, sin of empathy. You know, comments that like Elon Musk Jordan Peterson have. And there's somebody who actually wrote a, wrote a, wrote a article about radical empathy and the problem with radical empathy. And he's, it's like just, it's a mess, it's an academic. And I emailed him and asked him to do an interview, and he was thinking about it so and then others, the compassion community, too, I find, you know, they try to promote compassion over empathy, and they, they actually, I don't think they really understand empathy either you ask me, that's like the whole Dalai Lama crowd kind of around that they,
they kind of can, I really have to push back against that for very real reasons, because if you Have compassion without seeking to understand, then you end up helping people in a way that's not helpful.
Yes, that whole sympathetic, yeah, kind of response where you really, I really struggle with that, yeah, yeah. And you'd mentioned too that you had worked in Africa, right in in the with nonprofit, you know, care kind of projects, and that's kind of what you see there is this kind of a sympathy, feeling sorry for people, and you don't really listen to the people. So you have and again, experience
again. If we're defining empathy as just an emotion contagion experience, like a reactive process, then maybe compassion is more appropriate, but with our definition of empathy, that's more holistic, and it's more like an active process where you're trying to understand what somebody else, where somebody else is coming from, and what their needs really are, instead of just Assuming that I have a big problem with with compassion being the answer to all of this.
Yeah, you and me both yeah and only that. They're, they're like, critical, they're, they're like, with Matthew Ricard is a big, you know, person in you know, one of these. I. A scientist turned, you know, Buddhist monk, and he and Paul Bloom had, you know, dialogs, and he agrees, you know, with Paul Bloom, you know, so he very much confusing empathy with emotional contagion and stuff. So once, what's
the in their mind the difference between what they do and what empathy is, or what's the danger of empathy that you feel into somebody that you shouldn't feel? Or, yeah, they're
seeing it as emotional contagion. So if it was in an empathy circle that one person is like, Oh, I'm all distressed. I'm, you know, just falling apart that you as the listeners like, Oh, I'm falling apart. I'm, instead of reflecting, sensing into what the speaker is saying, they're sort of taking on the emotion and almost becoming narcissistic, self centered in their own emotion. Is, is how a lot of you know what their criticism is, and they're also saying, well, empathy doesn't solve problems, doesn't have an action component, and compassion does. Compassion means you want to do something to help them, but it's kind of like the help is a lot of that sympathetic, uh, help that, you know, Jodi's mentioning, where it's really almost like a narcissistic, you know, trying to address your own pain instead of really understand the real needs of of the others, and be in a holistic, you know, empathic dialog. And we have a good model for that too, with empathic you know, that empathy has a real action component. Is like human centered design. It's, you know, the design community and Silicon Valley, where it kind of came out of is, is all about, you know, the first step in designing anything is, you need to be able to empathize with the needs of the people you're designing for, and try to really understand and then also test, you know, ideas. And there's also a model called co design, where the you're together designing something with the people who you know you're kind of working with. So I just Yeah. So anyway, there's that's what kind of stuff it needs to be
there. Like, there's like, isn't there a component always, sort of as a core component, is that thing that people say, what you do, how you listen, how you speak, what you emit, an emotion, and so is causing something for me. And so what you do is making me like you're empathic, be also empathic, and you are the cause for me feeling this way,
you're the cause of my pain, right, right, right? And that, I think you addressed that, because that's what you're seeing, is some of these criticisms. I remember you talked about that recently, yeah, that was really good. Yeah,
no. I just, you know, I'm always I wanted, this is already kind of overwhelming me, because, like, so much already, and, and I'm interested in, you know, like I said, I'm the lay people person here. I'm the amateur. I'm interested in the topic. I don't know if I can be of help here. Yeah,
this is, like, you know, Jody's been, and I've been studying this in depth, from all, you know, the whole spectrum. So if you're just jumping into it, it can be confusing, definitely, because you don't have all the background, you know, understanding. But the the
I'm just saying, there's a simplification in the conversation that I can use. I can say there's a group of people who will, at any moment, go to the place where they say you're causing my emotions, and as another group of people who say, No, that's accurate, you cannot cause any emotions in somebody else, or somebody else cannot cause emotions in you. You're responding with your emotions to what somebody else is doing. And, yeah, we can, we can.
We can model that in the empathy circle. So in the empathy circle, it says, you know, you know, you're a real asshole. And then, and then the the listener says, Oh, you're hurting my feelings. I'm so, you know, terrible versus, Oh, I hear you saying that I'm an asshole, right? You're you're emphasizing with the criticisms or whatever stuff the person is saying, instead of taking it on personally and and it becoming you know all about you and how hurt you you are, because that's the whole victimization. Conversation, you know, stuff that happens, right? He's like, I'm the victim. You caused all my stuff, right? And the instead of being a victim, you can just be an empathizer. You just empathize with, right, with the criticisms, or whatever, or, you know, whatever is, you know, sending you off. So, yeah, I think that's a really, I
remember Marshall, Marshall was radical on that when, you know, we had like, 300 people in the room and people asked, So, you know, these kinds of questions, she said, Well, we have to set on one thing first, and that's nobody can cause any emotions in you and and that that was half of the event was the discussion around that, because people get really inflamed, inflamed by a statement like that, and say, No, that's not true. Of course, you making my own emotions and so on. And there's like an, I don't know it's some develop developmental step that people take when they start taking responsibility for their own emotions and
and empathy is a response. There's
a lot of the criticism stuff about empathy has to do with other people doing this to me so
and it's, how do we? Yeah, the thing is, is, how do we that's perfect. I mean, when you said it, it really resonated with me the other day. That's, you know, right on, on. But how do we document it? How do we convey that, you know, and is kind of the the issue, and we can model it in the empathy circle, right? So we can people, can actually role play it.
Can I ask a question in aspect of that? So how did do you come to taking responsibility for your emotion? Is that something that the work with empathy, strengthened in you or or even just brought online this awareness through that? Or did you bring this into,
I think empathy, you know, doing the empathy circle helps a lot, you know, it's and also seeing that the response, you know, it's very much the woke philosophy, right, is, oh, there's all these victims out there. You know, you're responsible for, you know, everything. And so, you know, I did an interview with Daryl Davis, who, he's been written up in the New York Times and all that, where he actually went out to the Ku Klux. He's African American. He went to the Ku Klux Klan folks, talked to them, listen to them, befriended them, and they saw that how wrong they were, just in terms of their judgments, by him just listening to them and befriending them and helping them. And he they, they gave up their their Ku Klux Klan robes, and he has, like, 200 robes, right? And I did an interview with him, and we called it. The interview is called empathizing with racism. So it's like not being against racism. You want to empathize with racism. You want to empathize with judgment. You want to empathize with authoritarianism, because the means are the end, and the empathy circle models that. So, you know, somebody can be authoritarian in the you should be doing this. You know, I demand that you do this in the empathy circle. You say, Well, I hear you really want me to do this, and you feel really strongly that you're empathizing, you know, with them. So, so it's, it's very subtle. And that's what I think these criticisms are, get, you know, you go all over the place, because the empathic experience is very subtle, you know, but the empathy circle models it, so we have a starting point. So anyway, and
I believe that one of the big criticisms that people come up with is when you say things like, empathize with racism, they think that what you're saying is agree with racism, and that's actually at the heart of the research that I'm doing, is trying to parse out the difference between empathizing and agreeing. It's not the same thing. I feel very strongly about that. I don't have the empirical data to back it up yet, but that's actually what I'm trying to do. But it intuitively makes sense to me that in order to empathize with somebody, most people think that you're saying you have to agree with them, but like Edwin was saying, that's one of the blocks to empathy, if you jump to agreeing with somebody, you're not actually empathizing with them. You're not validating where they're coming from and maintaining your own level of self empathy in the process. Yeah. And, so I think yeah, that's one of those incredibly subtle
Yeah. It's very subtle. Well, disagreeing too, agreeing or disagreeing. It's like both Exactly yeah and
but that requires from the list. Listener at least one step, which is when you talk about something that triggers my emotions. You know when you talk, or, let's say, about racism, and I have strong emotions around this, that I have a self awareness to say I'm reacting to what he's saying, and I'm going to stop myself from coming from my reaction and just still listen and reflect back what he's saying, or in the better version, even, I don't have a reaction to racism because I'm not racist. I don't have any racism in me. I'm not on the doing side, nor on the ignoring side or anything. I'm just matured enough to know racism exists. I can listen to it and I can reflect it back. I don't even have to have a reaction, because what, what, what you just touched on Jody is not just agreeing, but what I hear in soccer s like this, what you have no reaction to what he's saying. You are you? Are you not angry? Are you not like, getting like, super like, you should be really like, up in arms for what he's saying and just say, No, I'm not just, that's what he's saying. It has nothing to do with me. And that level of maturity is,
you know, that's most people don't get
there true empathic process, is it? Yeah, yeah.
So I've been learning recently, so I'm a PhD student right now, so I'm still taking classes, and I just took a developmental psychology class, and we were talking about the development of of moral reasoning. And there's this higher level of moral reasoning, where you're able to kind of do what we're talking about, where you don't get emotionally involved in it, but you can see that there are like transcendent values that that are more important than rules, and like, this should be this way, or this should be that way, and you're able To kind of rise above that. And one thing I found that was really interesting in this is that it's most people never actually get to that developmental stage of moral reasoning. And I mean, so I think that that's important for us to recognize when we're trying to teach people empathy, is that the natural state of it is that most people are going to expect, if you're not angry about the injustices, then you're not paying attention. I even saw some pictures of some protesters yesterday on social media. They were protesting the, you know, Elon Musk, stuff that's happening, and one of the signs that they said that they had said, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. And I think that really gets at what you're talking about, that we can rise above it. We can be active. We can be activists to try to do something that's positive. But anger isn't the answer, and one of the leaders of the church that I belong to just day before yesterday said, anger never persuades Yes, and I think that's so profound, because if we are going to get into that state of anger, people's defenses go up and all all of a sudden the empathic process stops. We can't have that safe space where people feel like they can talk to each other if somebody is lashing out in anger, because it's just a natural response that you're going to try and protect yourself when you see that somebody else is angry. And so, yeah, I just think that it's, it's not helpful if we go to that point, yeah, Are either of you familiar with the work of let's see what's it called Crucial learning. It's a company that does Crucial Conversations. They wrote a book a few years ago, but they talk about what you're talking about, where you you you view somebody else's actions as causing your emotions. And they, they have an extra step in there where it's you have to interrupt that event, where it's like, you know, just direct causation, and you add in as a component of a story I'm telling myself a story, and that is what is leading to my emotions. And I think that's a really important thing as we're talking about this if, if you have, if you take the the moment to have some self awareness and some self empathy, you recognize that there is a story that you're telling yourself, and you're interpreting what the other person is doing, and that's why you feel the emotions. It's not directly because of them, the what they did caused. Maybe you can, maybe you can say cause, but it caused the story that you interpreted. And then. Is what is causing your emotions? Yeah, so I think what makes it, breaking it down, and
I I've observed this in a group, in my group, in Phoenix, like, over and over again. It's, it's quite upsetting. I haven't been able to unlock that. This is social phenomenon that I just observe is that then when things happen. Then the people meet to reflect about what happened, and they share those stories with each other, not what happened actually. And so they share each other's interpretations of what happened. And get, get to fight more and more and more, because the interpretations have nothing to do with what actually took place. There are their interpretations, projections of the on the situation backed with strong emotion. Yeah, and that is the reality. It's a mess every time. And you can even see it in our political sphere here, right on TV, in the talk shows of MSNBC, that triggering process happening all the time, people not really listening to each other, but being triggered, and then say you are doing this to me. Mm, hmm, yeah.
I highly recommend that book because it they talk specifically about that. I've met the one of the authors, actually a couple of the authors of that book. And it is, it is really, it's, it's eye opening to see that there's, there's more to it than just a cause and effect. And so, yeah, I definitely recommend that, because it really overlaps a lot with what we're doing here. Let's see, I actually pulled up a summary. Yeah, I pulled up a summary. And just to give you an overview of what they talk about in the book, start with heart, so empathy and positive intent. Stay in dialog, make it safe. Don't get hooked by emotion. Agree a mutual purpose. Separate fact from story and agree a clear action plan. So they're specifically talking about, like, high stakes conversations when there's some big disagreement involved. So yeah, I think as we're developing our model of what holistic empathy is, that might be something we want to incorporate into it as well.
Yeah, and the in the empathy circle, what you're talking about Daniel, if somebody says something and and I, but I instead of reacting to it if, whatever, you know, those feelings may be coming up, like I feel like nervous anxiety, but I stay with the person, reflecting back what I'm hearing. So I'm maintaining the empathic sensing into the other person, but then when it becomes my turn to speak, I can respond with, oh, what you're saying is I really feel anxious and nervous. You know about that, because we want to be open and honest and not just repress whatever feelings we have. But then that feeling gets met with empathy. So the first response gets met with empathy and then the next response. So each response, each where each person says, gets met with empathy and but you also have the free speech, you know, sort of part of it, and that can get right, you know, you can always develop your reactions and so forth, and get deeper. Like, what your this book seems to show is like, how do you have more kind of a balance? Or how do you deal with these you know, issues that are maybe triggering or upsetting to you or that you, you know, want to be upset with? So again, I'm always trying to bring it back to the empathy circle, because I see that as sort of our Minimal Viable of, how do we deal with these? And from there, we can kind of grow, you know, the the the experience, the model, and deepen, deepen it. So
I like that a lot, and it makes me become aware how elegantly empathy circles, almost like bypass this whole possibility for somebody to get emotionally engaged into what another person is saying, simply by the Setup of it. Now what it also makes me think of is that probably people who want to blame and want to be victims, they're probably not going to come to empathy circles. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Probably, we probably won't be able to ever convince them to come in other words, they I have certain people, when they come to my breath work, they notice that I do breath work a little bit different, more free, and they have an idea because of their yoga they did and and then I can tell them, they come in the class, they say, No, I know breathing like that. And then I have actually told some of them, then maybe. This is not a class for you, because then they stay in the whole class, they stay reserved and hold back and never show up again. I know this already, so I'm just saying this because that is a level of maturity that we all have shared in all these trainings that I went to in Santa Barbara, and in all the circles I do now, there is that level of maturity sort of a foundational thing. What you've been talking about, Jody, that there is we, we assuming in the way we do empathy circles. We assume that that maturity is present.
Well, it helps build it too, you know, vice, yeah, and so there may be people to have that, you know that it's going to be a spectrum, and I think we can bring people along.
And I think it's, it's tricky sometimes also, because when people hear empathy circle, certain people, like the Elon Musks of the world, the Paul blooms of the world, don't want to engage in that because of the word that we're using that has a negative connotation for them, and so they see it as something that it's not because our version, within the empathy circle as well is just it's something completely different from what they're talking about and and also, in the research that I've been doing, there's some suggestion that people hesitate to empathize because they know that there's going to be a cognitive and emotional load attached to it, and so even if they know it's a good thing, I think I mentioned this couple weeks ago, Darryl, whatever. Yeah, Darryl Cameron some of his research, because you know that it's going to be emotionally and and cognitively taxing for you you turn away. And so we have to recognize that there is, there is a certain level of readiness that is necessary before people are even willing to engage in an empathy circle. So I do still see it as like the minimum viable structure, but we also have to recognize that there is a barrier prior to that it and that is people's definitions, and it's people's willingness to engage in the first place. And so do you have any ideas, Edwin, of how to help people be be more willing to enter into it when they see it as, oh, empathy. I'm not ready for that, or I don't want that.
I think it's our definition project, you know, trading material that clearly defines, you know, what, what we're talking about, I think is a big part. So that's sort of, it'll come in, yeah, training material that, or a podcast or something that kind of explains, and they say, Oh, I see what you're talking about, you know? So that's, that's 111, part. It was another part of, I forgot it. Well, I think we need to
meet people where they are and recognize that there is going to be that inhibition, there is going to be a hesitation, and maybe focusing on the benefits, like the relational benefits, like you have these problems, like with the Crucial Conversations book, they start with, with the with the understanding that everybody has these high stakes conversations. We all have arguments, and we don't like arguments. And so this is going to help you to make it through those arguments more effectively and maintain your relationships. And so if we attach it to the actual outcome that they, that they see something that will make them feel better, then they're more willing to engage in it. But if we, if we focus on, like, broadly, you know, humankind will be better, or the other person will be better. People don't care. Unfortunately,
appeal to their personal experience. That's where you're saying. Meet people where they are. That's the other part. Is just listening empathically, listening to them without being in an empathy circle, like when we do the empathy tent, we just set up chairs. We say, Come and we're just going to listen to you. So we don't say immediately, you know, you're going to go into an empathy circle. So, but you're learning and practicing the skills in an empathy circle. And then you just, you're meeting people wherever they are. It's like, whatever's on your mind, you know, let me just talk, you know, here, and that's I was thinking we'd go to the Republican and Democratic conventions or their events that we just set up the empathy tent and say, Hey, we're here to listen. Come and sit down and we'll just listen to you. So we're doing the first step in the empathy circle. And everybody loves to. Be heard and Yeah, talk. So that's sort of the the experience. Yeah, that's the hook. That's the experience. Yeah,
of it because they want to be validated. They don't necessarily want to validate the other side. Yeah, right. They want somebody to validate them. Yeah, yes,
yes. Everybody wants that. I you. That brings up a question for me. It's like, where I don't know how to ask it, right? Is this project for the purpose of converting more people, or is it to bring more people to us that are already ready,
as I mentioned, as to build it's it's an empathy movement to make mutual empathy a core cultural value. That's kind of what Right. Great thing is,
no, I mean, for me, this is a distinction that's kind of important, because I, you know, I've experienced in a lot of organizations, they are on the mission, and now everything becomes about recruiting more people, and especially the ones who are on the other side of us that are have a problem with us or something, we got to learn to talk to them and so on. And of course, yeah, that's important. What I rarely hear is, how do we build a stronger culture amongst us and amongst those are ready to jump in and then make our culture so attractive that for those who it's more difficult, we get them that way. You see what I mean. Yeah, it's like because one, one mindset is always thinking about trying to convince those who are not convertible or are difficult, and the other mindset would say, how do we make this more
attractive culture? Yeah, if you want to join,
yeah, the one is promoting, the other one is attracting. Is building a magnet, so modeling
it, yeah, yeah.
I mean, do they look at us and say, Wow, they look happier. Exactly. There's something about our lives that is attractive to them, right?
I want that. So, yeah, yes, exactly.
That's my model. I think we got to go there because, you know, for so many, many reasons, right now, we live in a moment where disruption and chaos is the doctrine, and I don't want to convince it that it's wrong. I want to, I want to build a shining city. So everybody comes over here,
you know, yeah, that's me. We need to build that alternative, empathic culture that people are saying, Yeah, I want to be part of that. It's a lot of fun. And we have that people come into the circle. They're sort of joining the circle. Say, Hey, this is really nice. I just feel really good here, being everybody so friendly, and I feel heard. So what do you think about the overall, the plan, the stove, I want to just that was sort of the outline that I just put down, you know, kind of for myself, that I wanted to kind of work on. I just wanted what you thought of the outline, or kind of where you are, especially Jody with,
yeah, I really like it. It's, it's incredibly, wonderfully ambitious, and that's how I like to live my life as well. How do you see, like, different people being involved in the different steps of that, like, I know you want to write a book. Do you see that something being something that we do collaboratively. What do you see that looking like and like a podcast and the trainings, and what you see our role being in that?
That's what I'm kind of looking at, like, how that could work. I would say a training course, you know, would be a good starting point. You know, maybe like, how do we teach people? I'm working on the presentations, which is bit like the course, you know, bit of a and maybe a course. So I'm kind of open for ideas, you know, how to kind of move move forward,
yeah. And then I would have to wonder, because before I started my PhD program, I was starting up a business where I was going to start consulting in in businesses and different organizations, and so I gave several talks on empathy with the with the hope that in the future, and like this is still part of my plan is to go into organizations and train them on how to interact more effectively with each other and with their with their customers and their different stakeholders, and so, you know, like you're talking about with human centered design, like all of that comes, comes into play when you're going and talking to organizations. So in terms of the best way to move it forward, when you're talking about a training program, are you thinking of something that's like, available for free online, or would it be, we hold training sessions like you've been doing with the empathy, empathy circle facilitator trainings like, what do you have in mind for
that? I was thinking something specifically on the on the. Definition, like a course on the definition of empathy. So stuff we've been talking about, it would be a didactic, you know, component, like a bit of a more of a like a lecture component. But then maybe doing an empathy circle, maybe doing role plays, where you can role play, like all those blocks that you, we actually do empathy circles. And you, you experience the different blocks to empathy. We, we, you can experience, yeah, all the different criticisms and what they're kind of saying. How can you experience that? Because if you, if you have a, you know, it's you, I can say something, and you can agree with me and well, what does that feel like, versus you just reflecting back and empathizing with what I'm saying? So each of those things, you can viscerally have a role play. So it'd be, you know, combination of, right now, a didactic, you know, bit of a lecture, and then interactive experiencing. But I'm kind of, you know, it's kind of open. I'm, you know, it depends on, you know, who, the who wants to be involved and how much. And I think that, you know, getting something into companies would be, would be great. I think now with, you know, that the EIS sort of collapsed. I mean, they were, they had million, billions, I think, of dollars were going into that, and that's kind of collapsed. So I think there's space for something new in business. Yeah, Catholic based, you know, which is bringing all the sides together. People don't feel shunned, or that they're guilty, or all that kind of stuff. So I think there's, you know, and that's where the money is, definitely, I remember, yeah, so
that's, that's an important thing that I wanted to bring up, is I'm not in this for money. Obviously, I'm in, like, I've done a lot of non profit work. I've, I've donated, I mean, at this point, more than half of my life, like not even exaggerating, has been donated, like without actually probably even way, way more than that, because I've also donated my time as a as a stay at home parent as well. So I'm definitely not in it for the money, but I also recognize from my extensive experience with nonprofit work, that when people are not expected to pay anything, they don't, they don't have any skin in the game. And there's a this weird concept of worth, needing to cost something, right? And so if it's if it's worth a lot to you, you should be willing to pay money for it. And so I think this is an important thing to talk about, because you're a nonprofit and going into companies and talking, you know, and training and doing all this, we need people to pay otherwise they don't see it as something valuable. And the more they have to pay, the more they value it, and the more they see other people paying, the more they're going to value it in the future, right? And so it's just like the snowball effect, whereas, if it's free, it must not be that good, or it must not be that impactful. So what are your thoughts on that?
Um, yeah, the you know, the best pay I ever got for this empathy work was through the Huffington Post. She started the, like a training, you know, for corporations. And they were getting area experts, you know, to do some kind of workshops, and they were paying $500 an hour, you know, for that. And that was pretty good. I mean, that was and so I'm all, you know, for corporations and so forth. So, you know, getting paid is important. And then also, I think for the movement to build, we have to have it has to be self sustaining. People have to be able to make it. And I've been really bad at that. I've donated, you know, a lot of my time. You know, 80% it seems like, you know, and you know, it's not sustainable for the average person, especially you want young people who are enthusiastic about the work. We have to have a model that they can have a, you know, make an income. So I'm looking, you know, at that, even though our facilitator training is free of a
couple of ideas to that. One, is that so, number one, what I hear in this community of people that I'm now connected to, and we've been connected to for, I don't know, more than a year now. There's a component that drives us that is not monetary, but it's very powerful, and that's different from. Most other organizations I've been associated with, and that's a real, deep hope that this will make a difference. And it's very trackable. It's very powerful, even in people who just came in. I mean, like Carla, an old friend of ours, discovered empathy circles like, I don't know, couple months ago or so and and just to listen to her, what she feels like, how strong this is quite amazing. If that's true for her, doesn't mean that's true for everybody, but I hear it from her, and then from so many others. So that's a driver that I don't want to ignore, because it really is powerful, and it's, and it's, it's, it's a little bit trans money. In other words, it's more powerful than even the financial aspects in our life. But having said that, I can imagine that this facilitator training, just like we're doing it, that it continues like this on a donation basis, because it's the best way to get people into the fold and get more and more people to participate in here. Then it through that we can find the people who want to do more, and if we would have then training and modules and different things for them to either, you know, say, I want to become a trainer that goes into corporations and sells that training, and I'm willing to pay for that and then build the next level. Sort of, you know, people choose themselves into the tiers of engagement in this movement, and the first tier is kind of donation basis and freeze. So that's for the nonprofit part of us, and then the other tiers can have increasingly monetary values attached. Yeah,
that's what I've been thinking, too. Yeah, we always have a free or by donation empathy, you know, training to start with. And like, the definition course would be like a next level, you know, paid course, probably, you know, starting with some free prototyping, testing, testing it and and the donations and charging for it,
the donations also, there is something to it, you know, Zach did a thing that made initially, everybody crunch a little bit, because first day we collected in the training a certain X amount of money and and Zach counted it in front of everybody next morning. So this is what we pulled in. Can we have this at least double bite tonight? Okay, everybody, like, you know, we didn't normally ask for money like this, straight up, but Jack did it, and it more than doubled by the night. So it's good to ask to learn also how to ask for donations better and increase our donation law too. Yeah, I think
was that in Phoenix? Yeah, there wasn't Phoenix. We took
in the most money from a training ever.
Yeah, so I don't know, how does that resonate with you? Jody, with in terms of finances charging?
Yeah, I mean, it resonates from the perspective of self sustainability of the organization, and also from the perspective of, you know, perceived value, and it's such a tricky balance, because you want everybody to be able to learn from it and appreciate it, right? So you want to have it be free for those who can't afford to pay more for it, but then you also want to increase the perceived value, because it is one of the most valuable things that we have in society. It's much more valuable than the Louis Vuitton bag that my mom just got right much more valuable, but it was $3,000 that that she paid for that right? And it's that is a completely worthless thing, but people are willing to pay money for things that they value. And so it's just, I don't have the answer to this. This is something that I have tossed back and forth for decades. I don't know how to answer this question, but it is. It is such an important thing for us to consider is, how do you get the message out there to everybody and help them to value the message that you're putting out there at the same time. So I don't know if maybe that's something we just want to mull over for the next week, and maybe consider discussing it next week as well. If could I share my screen? Oh yeah, I just want to show you. Let's see. Okay, crucial learning. Let's see.
Okay, so this is the company. It is a for profit company that created crucial conversations that book, and they have a series of courses that they provide for individuals. You can sign up and take any one of these classes, and I think it's $100 or something like that to take the class. And then they have corporate trainers as well, who they they're independent contractors, and they come and they receive all of the training, and then they go out into different companies who pay them directly. And it's something like 3000 $5,000 something within that range, to come and do a training in their company. And the fact that they have it as a paid thing, at least from the company's perspective, they value it much more than what I have offered in the past, which has been free. So I mean, I've tried to take the same approach, where I've said, Hey, I I can come in and do this training for your company. It's really great content, and the fact that I was offering it for free, nobody took it, even though I knew that my content was amazing, the fact that crucial learning has their content that is very expensive, and it's for all intents and purposes, we're talking about the same thing, but there's an is an expensive product, and so people value it a lot more. And so that's that's just something that we need to consider moving forward. If we want to create a movement, we need to we need to help people to see the value in their own lives and in their organizations. And sometimes that means money. Sometimes it means just the correct way. Whatever the the marketing approach would be, we have to connect it with their own needs. So that's that's that's just one example. I've seen a lot of different companies like this. If I don't go into academia, I may actually work for this company, because they are based here, pretty close to BYU. So that's just, that's just something I want us to really consider as we're looking into putting out information. A book is a great way to, like, it's a low cost product that you can get to a lot of people. And then that's like, are you familiar with like, there are a lot of coaching programs. I'm a member of two different coaching programs where they're like, training people to become public speakers, and like online influencers and stuff like that. And they this is something they talk a lot about, where it's like different tiers, where you hook people with the free stuff, and then you get them into the low ticket items, and then you progress them onto the higher ticket items. So that might be a model that we want to follow, where we can still continue to provide a lot of free content, but then as people recognize the value, then they want more, and then you get them into the higher
ticket items. I've been seeing that on YouTube that they have free but now there's like members only content. You know that that's becoming a thing and and then you have to pay for that. So,
I mean, because in the end, we all need to, we all need money to survive, yeah, so we, we can't just continue to give this everything away for free, for forever, forever. Yeah,
that's actually we have a empathy circle on that topic, with when is it? Oh, it's actually the 19th. It's the financial circle at two o'clock. So it's, how do we kind of, Oh, interesting. Yeah, you're welcome to attend.
That's not this Saturday, but next Saturday, next Saturday at
two o'clock in this Zoom Room. It's and we did one, and it was, the topic was, let me see, yeah, I haven't, I think the recording of the last one, I can bring that up. And it's with, with Ingrid. She's been leading that she's our treasurer. So that's Daniel's wife.
I'm sure she has a lot of thoughts on this topic. Okay, so that's at 2pm in your zoom link, right? Yeah, okay,
and that's, that was the last one. Just ran it through the AI.
Okay, yeah, I'll see if I can attend that one. Oh, I just put it in on the 18th, not the 19th. I mean,
I've been really bad at this, you know, for the addressing this. So, yeah, I'm just the in terms of finances, you know, if I didn't have social security, I'd be in trouble, you know, kind of thing. Yeah,
I. And I mean, my first job out of out of college was for a nonprofit, and I could not have worked there full time if I didn't get paid, and that so they part of the donation income for the nonprofit needs to go toward sustaining the organization as well, like, and, I mean, I'm getting into stuff that I don't know anything about, with how your organization is run. And so I apologize if this is coming off as, like, brash at all, because that's not,
this is we're dealing with those issues.
And when, when things got tight, monetarily, like, during 2008 the financial crisis, we had to cut a couple of employees and just cut back so that we could continue to run the programs, because people don't want to give money to employees, right? They want to give the money to the programs. But people who know how a nonprofit should work and how to maintain sustainability know that you have to have employees in order to grow an organization and to grow a movement. And so if this organization is going to be able to grow and Edwin, Let's all hope that you're around forever, but you won't be right. And so to pass it off to the next generation of movement, there's going to have to be some income to help support it.
Yeah, we're definitely,
yeah, we're not in opposition to that. It's hard to figure
out. It is, it is so true life.
All my life, I've been doing work. I mean, I just taught a workshop on Saturday about drum and rhythm knowledge that took me four decades to come up with the content of that workshop and continuous practice myself teaching and everything. There's some jewels in there that took forever to come up with, but I share them in a matter of half an hour. Like, I mean, how can I put a value to that? It's almost impossible, you know. I
mean, each person who comes to that would have to pay $100,000 each,
right? So I settled on, you know, like, normally, a three hour class, private class, out of my house, right? If I look in San Francisco, they run it like, I don't know, 45 bucks or something like that, maybe 5060 so I asked for ad. I could easily ask even in that framework, for 120 but nobody will show up even for that. And it could be much more expensive than that, because it's life changing. It's absolutely life changing, what you learn. So I think there's a lot of financial systems, or the financial system is not really reflective for value shared. It's random and it's annoying. It's part of the cognitive dissonance that we have to deal with that. People get paid outrageous amounts for money for jobs that seem to be so important, and I can't see why they're so important, and then teachers who do really the most important thing. I mean, so how does that make sense? And so now in
the mirror and all of
that, we have to figure out how to charge for making the work better. I mean, that's freaking hard,
and nobody's going to want to pay for that, because that should be free. It should be provided for free, but then that, then they don't implement it, because they haven't paid for it, they haven't invested in anything yet. So it's such a tricky balance. I think it's a largely a matter of marketing. It might be valuable to bring on, like, just a powerful marketer onto the board. Do you have anybody in marketing? No,
we'd be good to have. Yeah,
that was, that was my thought for there is money in the organization. I think the best way to spend it is to, you know, polish our our image and and, and make the magnet stronger. And that's best done by people who know how to do this, because it's hard. It's not simple.
Well, that's the other part too. Is, is having donors that, you know, people put a lot of money into the whole Dei, you know, vision, and people got excited about it. But, you know, the same thing for an empathy movement that people can donate, you know, put in resources and, you know, to help move it forward. So I see that as another no route that we need to get. There's sort of this polarization everybody's in, in one camp or the other or I think what we're doing is, is a different approach. It's like, well, we need mutual empathy, you know, between all sides. Yes, and otherwise, we just keep going back, swinging back and forth with the polarization. And there's, I mean, there's people, you know, I think that we can, you know, convince or they would value that see the importance of it, and especially if we model it so and we had gotten tons our viewers. Did ever send you the media kit from our all the empathy tent work you're seeing that? I don't know that I've seen that. Oh, I put it in the chat here, just so you can see, you know, we've been on all kinds of, let's see, is that going in there? Download. There it is. Yeah, if you download that, you can see, those are just some of the media, you know, that we got with the empathy tent. So being out in public really gets a lot of publicity, you know, kind of and
it's a great, portable, relatively inexpensive way to make a big impact. Because you go to those highly populated areas, there's a lot of people who are going to see your empathy tent, and it speaks really loudly. Yeah, that's great, yeah.
And if you download that, you can see, you know, it's like LA Times, Sacramento, bee, you know, TV stations in the Bay Area, even Fox and Friends mentioned it, but in negative terms. You know, Breitbart, they totally, you know, miss, yeah, I can tell you a story sometime, but Breitbart, but they were, they did a fair bright part was actually pretty fair in there. The comments were pretty nasty. There was, like, 400 like, oh, you lived hard. You all this kind of stuff. And I said, Oh, great. I hear you're interested. Would you like to hold an empathy circle to talk about it? And suddenly everybody left. I didn't, they couldn't me so and I was really wanted to have an empathy circle with them to talk about their their criticism. I said, I can be three of you and just me, you know, just three against one. I'm I don't care, you know, glad to have the dialog. And suddenly they said, Oh, he's not getting triggered. I guess we're just go do something. Yeah,
because you've, you've reached that higher level of moral reasoning that they haven't reached yet, they want you to be angry,
right? Exactly? Yeah, they want you to be angry Exactly.
Oh, that's that. I think that is beautiful, right there. Yes, you were still willing to engage, even when they were trying to provoke you. Yeah,
it even happened. That's the second happened. The second time the there's that guy. He was a real right wing sort of spokesperson. You know, back to the first Trump era, and he we had the empathy tent set up at Sproul Plaza at UC, Berkeley, and the next day they were going to come, but I guess they had somebody, and they were kind of checking things out, and they saw the empathy tent, and they took a photograph of it, and then he commented on and said, Haha, empathy tent, you know, kind of ridiculing it. And it was the same thing. There's hundreds of, you know, his he had, like, a million, you know, followers on Facebook or something. It was the same thing. They were like, Oh, this, you know, libtards, all the criticism. And again, I just said, let's have a dialog, you know, let's, you know, talk, and I'm open. Here's, we'll have a zoom conversation. And suddenly they all just disappeared. So if you get criticism, just one of the best things to say, well, let's have an empathy circle. You know about it?
Yeah, I want to listen. Yeah,
exactly.
That's so interesting. And I think that goes back to what we were saying earlier. If we can't get people into the empathy circle, then the power of the empathy circle is limited, right? Like, if we can't get them to be open to the idea of it, then we have to take a different approach. And this is definitely a marketing question. We have to tap into, what are the deep psychological needs that they have that are not being met, and how what we have actually meets those needs? Yeah, because they see it as the antithesis. They see it as threatening. Being open to it is, is something that's going to threaten their identity. It's going to threaten, maybe their belief system. And so again, this is going to come back to definitions of empathy, and back to why people are hesitant to empathize, yeah, and so getting getting into the marketing side of it, I think, is going to be really, really helpful with this. And
I think that having a clear definitions and being able to explain clearly what we're talking about, you know, and differentiating other. The criticisms. Now, there's valid points the phenomenon. There's valid points to the phenomenon people are talking about, but it's not empathy. And how do we, in a clear way, show, well, that's not what we're calling empathy. And and again, you know, I think the empathy circle can, can model it. I was also wanting to do. I can show this just so you start thinking about it this over the next weeks or so, is how to model something to show how feelings work. Because the whole affective empathy issue being feelings empathy is a real sticking point. It's very confusing and and the hobby who I mentioned, he talks about this too in his talk, and I will send you that link is, if somebody comes up, say, in an empathy circle and has depression, they say, Oh, I'm really depressed. You sense it. You feel a little bit of it, you know, within this empathic space. And then you reflect back your understanding, I hear you're feeling depressed. I'm looking for a way of modeling this versus, you know, emotional contagion, where the person is depressed and you feel the depression takes you over. So it's like, called, you know, emotional contagion, state matching or identification or reaction. Yes,
create this. Because this is like, Okay, this is awesome.
This is what I'm trying to find. I'd like, I'd like to create, like, a program where we can, like, model this, you know. And it was great, yeah. And then so and then the other is, well, that's, that's not really emotional. You could say that that's, that's two different people experiencing that's more like state matching or identification or reaction, whereas emotional contagion would be the person has depression, and that depression, feeling of depression moves over into the space of the other person, so they're both in a depressed state versus an empathic state. And so empathy, so in empathy, the listener feels into the speaker's experience reflects backs their understanding you are feeling depressed, the speaker continues sharing, and listener stays present, reflects back their understanding. And so to be able to model that, how there's a flow, and like to maybe even do like a cartoon, you know how they have these animations where they have somehow be able to animate this, and you know, they get a lot of views, those animations and and then there's the other part I wanted, and I'm just looking, how do we model this? And the other is that the person is depressed, you empathize, and you feel a little bit through mirror neurons, you're feeling a little bit, but it's not taking up your whole consciousness. And you're also creating, like, a map, an understanding of the other person, you know, we create a map about the other person. Why do they feel joy? How intense is it, you know, etc. And so is that mental on which is, yeah, model, mental model. So I'm just thinking, how do we in a, you know, engaging, easy to convey way, you know, sort of model these experiences. Yeah,
this is super helpful. I love those visuals because that's I mean, in answer to Daniel's question near the beginning of this conversation, like, what is the difference between those different types of empathy? And I think that that makes it so clear and simple that it's it actually can be a very bad thing if you are just engaging in emotion contagion, because all of a sudden, everybody's depression or anxiety or suicidal thoughts or homicidal thoughts, that becomes yours, and that is very dangerous, right? Yeah, and it's so that's, I think that's so important to really dig into more. And I really don't see the psychological research digging into that.
There's no models. I have never seen any clear sort of models going in this direction, so we can clearly, yeah, display it,
yeah. I know that's really beautiful.
And think about it like I think, I mean, I personally will go as far as saying you cannot get contagious. And a contagion by somebody else, it's not like a virus. That's not true. You're responding with your own trauma. You're adding your trauma to the situation. Because otherwise there would always be a possible, possibility, no matter how far you develop yourself, that somebody else come around and just dump an emotion on you and you have to deal with. It forever? No, well, there
is the aspect of mirror neurons, which makes sense to me. So if you're feeling joy that through mirror neurons, my neurons fire, my joy neuro my so I am sensing your feeling kind of within myself, because I I'm mirroring it. It's just not having that. It's not two
different things. Uh huh, I'm talking about something totally different. Because, like, the whole story about around the empath, as you know, I see in the younger crowd a lot, it's like this situation, I gotta lock myself in my home right, right from an empath. And when I go out there, I pick up all these emotions from these people, and it pollutes my inner space. Yeah? And that is BS, yeah. That is, you feel things. Yes, you vibrate with you. You have the mirror neurons. But that's a living thing. That's not that is there for a moment and then it's gone. It's it's like, in your little imagery, is the ability, like you put it in the little circle, to resonate with somebody else, but when you then add your own story to it, you know what you did caused by me, that I am not an angry person, because your anger got into me, because I'm an empath. That's not what you're describing when you say you have mirror neurons. You just you're resonating with another person, but that's a moment to moment thing. It's a living thing. It's not something that stays there for days or for hours after you met that
person, right? And even your mirror is your
emotion that was activated, yeah,
and your mirror neurons are in your brain, and they are of the interconnected network of what makes you you, and everything, all of the stories that you've told yourself through your whole life. And so even though there is resonance there, like you can see it on fMRI, and actually, Garrett Cardin, who was with us last two weeks ago, he's actually doing a study in two weeks where they're going to have storytellers on stage, autistic storytellers, and they're going to have people in the audience where and they're going to have fMRI scanners happening so during during the storytelling, to see what when the resonance happening happens during the stories. So I'm excited about that. So I do know that that, like the research has shown that that is a real thing, but it does not necessarily mean that it is exactly the same like it doesn't mean the same thing to you. Like, even if you have a similar emotion to them, and you can feel it and you, you're kind of vicariously living it with them, like you're saying, Daniel, it's, it's not going to continue to be the same forever, and it's not going to be incorporated into your story as it is incorporated into this, into their story because it's it's infinite, like the number of connections between the different experiences that you've had in your life overlap with theirs for a moment, right? But then their their orbit continues on, and it's going to mean something different to them than it does to you. And so I've actually said in the past that that this version of empathy that we're talking about where it's like, actual neural resonance, I don't believe it exists, and and people have been, like, really taken aback when I've said that. I don't think that empathy in that form is real, because it's always going to be filtered through the lens that you bring with you. Yeah, right. And so we can get closer to creating that map in our minds of what the other person's experience is, but it's always categorically across the board, every single time, going to be different from what they actually experienced. And we, I think,
no, don't you think it can Yeah, and it's, it's
still something we should work to Yeah, because it's still going to improve our relationships, it's still going to make society a better place, but it's not ever going to be 100% what they experienced and the the way they experienced it,
and It's never going to be that something from me is transferred over to you and now you polluted by that? That's, oh, would
that work, right? I have something. I
have a trauma in me, and now I traumatize you because of my trauma.
I mean, I can see people taking it
on. That's my Yeah, that's my five year old who says you make me feel bad. Yeah, as a five year old, I get that. But
yeah, with the with the with the empaths are saying they want to block, block themselves off, right? Imagine a wall around yourself to block the. Energy. And I think the that's sort of a defensive mode, and maybe you got to go take a walk and, you know, relax or something. But the other is to reflect back what you're hearing like, oh, this person is this, and again, that reflecting back, it's like, for me is, it's the self other distinction, it's them that's doing this. So I hear, Oh, they're really upset, you know, even if I say it silently, and that's the thing that kind of grounds me. It's like, hey, it's not, it's not all my turmoil. It's like, Oh, I hear they're really upset, and they're, you know, or whatever, or they're very happy and excited. So I think it's that, just like in the empathy circle, that reflection kind of helps with the self other distinction and is sort of grounding.
There's this work from Malcolm Gladwell. He did all these books blink and his latest project. I forgot the title of the book. He wanted to assess if people are able to really know what's going on in another person. And he did it in his typical way, very scientifically, very fast study, like tons of studies and everything. And essentially, what he came to is that we suck at it really bad. We have no idea what's in general, we'd have no idea what's actually happening in another person. What we project is happening is, for the most part, I mean, above 90% of the time, we're wrong in this research. And that goes along with what Marshall always used to say, don't assume anything. Why don't you ask? Why don't you go and ask the person here what's happening for you? And that's, and that's the premise of the empathy circle to begin with. You speak freely about what's happening for you, and so I have access to you because you give it. I don't fantasize in that way and and the reflection back listening, I think, you know, there's something to be talked about. Edwin, I feel like lately I've been like, I don't know something like the distinctions of reflecting back. I think are going to going to become more sophisticated. You know, you get better at it. You mean, yeah, you're getting better. Yeah, you get better at it, and, and. And there's another depth to it, that and, and also sometimes a little bit. Now it's, it's not part of our discussion.
Yeah, it's, how do we go deeper in the empath empathy, in the empathy circle. And, you know, I've kind of focused on the first step a lot. There is a lot with, you know, sharing your own feelings and needs, being more open, and how do you reflect back people's feelings and their needs? So there's a lot of more depth that can be. I did put Dan sahavi video in there. I
just pulled that up. Oh yeah, I have to hop off in a minute, but I just wanted to share my experience really quick, of like, my journey from being a person who saw myself as an empath, like at first, in a positive way, but then I started to see it in a negative way. And I I've always valued empathy. And I mean, even I look back at my my CV from when I was just getting out of high school, and I put on there that that was one of my skills was empathy, and so I definitely have always valued it. And I know Edwin, I've told you about this, but I don't think Daniel's heard this, but a couple like this is probably three years ago. My husband's best friend killed his family and then himself. And so this was there. This was a very intense opportunity for me to experience a lot of empathy. And I was like, ready for it. And I was like, Okay, I'm I value empathy, and so I'm going to go and empathize with everybody who's been affected by this. And what ended up happening was that when I was so fully open to everybody's perspective on that I actually had a really difficult, like mental breakdown, like I every night in the middle of night of the night, I would wake up with like, ex existential dread, like panic attacks all the time, and I didn't even know How to get out of it. And so when I talk about like empathy, like pot, like this, this positive empathy being something where you go out and you you know you're in your hot air balloon, right? You lift off the ground, you go into their experience, then you have to ground yourself back into your experience. I think that is something. That people who are still developing in their empathy don't understand, and it's such an important component of it. And I had been studying empathy for a few years at that point, and empathy, the way I understood it at that point, was destroying my life. And so to come out of that and to be on the other side of that, and now see that it's actually there is a higher form of empathy. I think that that's really important when we're teaching people how to do it and how to define it, because I valued it and it ruined me. And so now I still value it. Obviously, I'm an empathy researcher, and we're having these conversations, I still value it, but I value a different version of it than I did before, which could
be, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh, it could be that's the mutual empathy. In a sense, what we were doing was an empathy deficit, because you weren't being heard and seen yourself. It sounds like, yeah, your your anxiety, it was sound like you had no place to kind of share that and and be heard. So you were just taking in everybody's experience, but which is, you know, empathizing in one direction. But it wasn't that mutuality, and there wasn't a mutuality, probably, between the participants that were all affected listening to each other even
well they they weren't talking to right? And so I felt like I had to go between and I actually never had communication with the family of the wife, because I didn't know her as well and I didn't know her family, but I was still like seeing what they were posting on social media and how hateful they were being, obviously, I mean, I would feel the same way. And so I was feeling that from them, from the things they were saying, and I was feeling everything my my interpretation of what his family was experiencing, and also the trolls online, what they were saying, who didn't have any business being part of this conversation. I was taking all of that on as well, and I was, I was destroying my own life through the process. And so when we're talking about, like, creating this training, I think that that that needs to be an important component of it, because people misunderstand what is healthy empathy, and they they misunderstand why we even say it's a good thing in the first place. And so I think that's I've got to go, but I think that's like
a parting thought, and we can, yeah, great, holistic empathy, yeah, exactly. Okay. We want to do too, kind of like specific steps that we can take too. Yeah.
And I, you know, Edwin, I'm so sorry, since the beginning of this endeavor, you keep wanting to get to that, and we keep just having discussions. And so
I enjoy it too, but I wish that's all we had to do.
I know, but I know the rubber needs to meet the road at some point. Right, right. Okay,
I appreciate you sharing this. This. This is very meaningful,
sorry.
So next week, we will actually start making, like, serious progress, yeah, okay,
at least get clear on what progress it's all documented, right? We got the notebook. LMS, got a whole podcast there.
Oh, I wonder what the podcast is gonna say about today's conversation. It's gonna be great.
