Hey everyone. I'm Alyssa Stover, sorry, I couldn't make it today I had a conflict, and also it's my baby's first birthday, so it was just a perfect storm of not being able to come live. But I really appreciate the opportunity to record this in advance. Happy to share my thoughts and also follow up with anyone who might have questions individually anytime. So today I'm going to talk about how empathy circles really changed my life, not just on a personal level, but even a professional level. And it really started for me when I realized that there's a moment in every conversation when you realize the other person isn't really listening to maybe they're nodding, maybe they're making the right sounds, but you can tell their mind is somewhere else, probably preparing what they're going to say next. We've all been on the receiving end of this, and if we're honest, we've all been that distracted listener, too, and I certainly was. So I really started noticing that this was happening. I realized that I wasn't being a great listener, but I didn't know how I might get better at listening. I thought empathy might mean putting myself in other people's shoes, and I was really wrong about that too. We've all had those conversations when we felt completely unheard, where that other person was clearly just waiting for their turn to speak. But what if I told you that learning to truly listen, not just to hear, but really listen, could transform every relationship in your life and even your career. So today, I want to share how discovering empathy circles didn't just change how I communicate, it fundamentally transformed my relationships, my work, and honestly, my entire approach to just being a human. The story starts at UC Berkeley, where I was a neuroscience student trying to understand how the brain works. But despite studying neural connections all day, I was struggling with the most basic human connection of actually listening to people. I knew I wasn't great at listening like I said, I could really sense that, that restless feeling when someone was talking, and the way my mind would wander, how I'd find myself preparing what to say next, instead of really hearing what they were saying, and just didn't really know where to go. And it's not like there's some kind of manual for how to actually listen one on one at Cal, students can create their own courses with Professor sponsorship. And another student approached me with an idea that seemed both ambitious and terrifying, to create a course on empathy. And when they asked for my help, my first thought was doubt I knew listening was something I struggled with, What business did I have in helping other people improve it? But then I had what might have been one of my only truly wise thoughts in college, which was, what better way to learn something you don't know how to do, except to try to teach it? So there we were, one student, my friend, who really had a lot of skills around empathy, and I felt like he had knew what he was doing. And then there was me, where I was really trying my best to contribute, trying to design this curriculum about human connection, and we were doing really intense research, reading everything we could find. When one of our students in our first semester teaching it made a discovery that really changed my life. He came across something happening right there on campus, these empathy circles led by someone named Edwin from what was called the empathy center. And the student introduced me and Edwin, and that was kind of it. From day one, I felt constantly uncomfortable in these circles. But really, you learned the most through discomfort, and I knew that, all right, this is what I had been searching for. This was how I was really going to become better at listening. And the concept seemed almost embarrassingly simple. People sit in a circle, you take turns speaking, you take turns listening. There's no advice giving, there's no problem solving. You're really witnessing for others. And I was pretty skeptical, like I said, it was very awkward. It felt very uncomfortable at first to just reflect back what I heard. And I was wondering, you know, how could something this basic create meaningful change? It felt so small, but I was also really desperate to become a better human being, so I just sort of stuck with it. I felt like this was a way forward. I didn't know where it was going to lead, but I felt like I was making some kind of progress. And I showed up with all my usual defenses. I was prepared to help, to fix, to offer solutions. And after all, isn't that what we're supposed to do? When someone shares a problem, you just solve it, right? But Edwin and the other facilitators were very clear, my job was not to problem solve. It was just to listen and reflect back what I heard and to be present with whatever the speaker chose to share. Was it simple? Yes. Was it easy? No, and as I sat there fighting literally every instinct. Jump in with advice or relate back to my own experiences, I began to notice something I'd never really seen before, which was what happens when people feel truly heard without judgment or interruption. And within my first few sessions, I watched people really light up when they felt genuinely listened to, and that's when the first profound truth hit me, which was that was people just want to be heard. And I realized I'd been doing what most of us do in conversations, listening to reply and not to understand. My mind would race ahead while they were still speaking, formulating advice, crafting my clever counter arguments, or just waiting for my turn to talk, but in empathy circles, with no opportunity to respond or fix or solve, something really magical happened. And when I truly listened, not to judge, not to help, people would often have their own breakthroughs right there in the moment. I just had to listen, and they figured it out on their own. They didn't need my solutions. They really just needed my presence. And here's where it got really more interesting to me. This experience forced me to confront how wrong I see itself. I think since I was a kid, people would teach me, and I think this is usually what people are taught, which is to put yourself in that other person's shoes, and I think there's some value to that concept, but we tend to be really bad at doing that, because when you put yourself in someone's shoes, a lot of the time, you're just projecting your own experiences or values or reactions onto their story. You stop really seeing them, you see yourself in their circumstances, but real empathy requires something much harder, which is setting aside everything you think you know and creating space for someone else's truth to emerge. And time and again, I was really surprised by how wrong my initial impressions were when I would listen. So the colleague who seemed really angry was actually scared, the friend who seemed to have it all together was really lonely. The family member who I just did not get was operating from a completely different priority than I imagined, and I realized that when you really listen, you will be surprised by how much you assume and how much you get wrong? So armed with all these insights, I started experimenting in some of my personal relationships, and the changes were really profound. So with my partner, instead of jumping into problem solving mode with him, I started asking what would be most helpful for you right now? Do you want me to listen? Or are you looking for suggestions? And I feel like he really started opening up more, sharing deeper concerns that he previously kept to himself, and we really became closer and just more able to go through life together. We've been together for almost a decade. We've had two kids since all this happened, so it really helped us in in very meaningful ways that have lasted a long time with friends, I stopped trying to match every story with one of my own. Instead of waiting for my turn to speak, I tried getting curious. So in addition to trying to reflect back what people heard to check my understanding, I would try to probe some follow up questions with friends, like, what was that like for you? And I feel like my friendships really deepened, because people felt more seen rather than just heard as like a setup for my own stories, and with my family writ large, some of the more frustrating dynamics began to shift when I stopped assuming I knew what motivated the more difficult relatives, instead of getting defensive, I started trying to ask questions that helped me understand their perspective with conflicts in really any scenario, whether it's friends with family and at work, asking someone to help me understand your perspective became more powerful than any argument that I could make, and the most surprising result to me was people started seeking me out for conversations. When you become someone who truly listens, you become someone people actually want to talk to, like I mentioned at the top, these principles didn't just transform my personal life, they really revolutionized my work. So before jumping to solutions, I learned to ask, Have I really heard what this person is trying to tell me? And this has helped me prevent many, many hours of solving the wrong problems