Humanizing Our Lived Experiences

Throughout our lives, we’ve been reminded of The Golden Rule: treat other people the way we would like to be treated. At its core, it captures the practice and art of empathy. But as we mature and evolve with awareness on our self-discovery journeys, we begin to understand the nuances, the simplicities and the complexities of it.

According to The Greater Good Science Center, emotion researchers generally define empathy "as the ability to sense other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling."

Self and group leadership are about empathy. It becomes the cornerstone that allows learning, unlearning, relearning, growth, innovation and excellence to blossom. As positive difference-makers and agents of change, we are in the business of managing and caring for people. No matter our industry and craft, we have the unique responsibility to lead ourselves and others with compassion each day we are granted life.

We can get so caught up in the glitz and the glamour, the status symbols, the fancy titles, having power, and needing to be right that we forget it costs absolutely nothing to be kind. It costs nothing to practice empathy and to actively and presently listen to another person's story and lived experience.

Every day, we can remain mindful that we’re living in a period where technology can dictate our empathy for ourselves and for others. While technology is a powerful tool that can connect us to the world, it can just as quickly disconnect us from humanizing with another person's reality.

Realize there is a universal human hunger to be needed. No matter if it is masked, people deeply yearn to be respected, listened to, understood, appreciated, loved and seen. In our endeavors to lead ourselves and others with self-discipline, it is important to shift our mindset to WE instead of ME. We are all trying to figure out this life and this moment in history. We can breathe life into people by acknowledging their existence and genuinely taking time to find the commonality in the lived experiences.

The late great Dr. Maya Angelou captured the power of empathy brilliantly by saying, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

While we will never fully be able to live in another person's shoes and see life precisely through their lens, we can foster a greater level of self-compassion, love and empathy in listening to understand. It is within our control to journey gracefully with open ears, minds and hearts to not dehumanize other people's experiences just because it might look and sound completely different from our narrative.

Let's commit to doing our part in being the solutions by acknowledging others and ourselves with empathy. We have the choice to manifest footprints of love, kindness, humility, integrity and faith everywhere we go by our actions.

The question becomes, what will we choose today?

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