I heard a great quote recently on an episode of Hidden Brain and it made me laugh while driving home a really important point.

Empathy has more to do with me than I thought.

We all want to make the issues someone else’s problem.

“That guy is rude” or “Those people don’t do anything right” but the real issue is that we are not communicating well. I really enjoyed Alan Alda’s take on communication and helping people communicate better by asking them to roleplay. By getting people to stand in someone else’s shoes and actually interact in a dialog they naturally become more self-aware and hopefully more empathetic. If you have 40min, it’s worth your time.

Listen to the episode below