Sympathy and Empathy

Sympathy is, "I understand how you feel."
Empathy is, " I feel how you feel."
Both sympathy and empathy are important. But of the two, empathy is certainly more important.

When we empathize with our customers, employers, employees, and families, what happens to our relationships? They improve. It generates understanding, loyalty, peace of mind, and higher productivity.

How do you judge the character of a person or, for that matter, of a community or a country? It is very easy. just observe how the person or community treats these three catagories of people:

1. The disabled
2. The elderly
3. Their subordinates

These are the 3 groups of people who cannot stand up as equals for their rights.

Be a Better Person

"Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and wrong. Because some time in our lives we would have been all of these ourselves."

-Lloyd Shearer, 1986