Hello, and welcome to Day 1.

Seth Godin has been blogging daily for years. Personally, I keep a journal (pen and paper), try to keep up a personal blog, and as many that know me well, utilize Post Its, mirrors, and windows often to sketch out ideas. Nothing but a flow of thought or outpouring of feelings most of the time. My journaling isn’t focused, it is just a brain dump.

Daily Lab Entries will be different and have a general focus on empathy. I think about empathy, read about it, and annoy my wife and kids with it daily. It’s time to share all of my empathy focused learning, thinking, and doing with the world.

5 basic promises I am going to make to you, myself, and Empathy Lab:

1. Daily thought(s) on empathy published here.

2. Short and sweet, I am not trying to win awards AND our time is valuable.

3. Maximum of 1 link + low to no fancy formatting.

4. From my perspective, or an amazing guest’s.

5. Simple sketches before photos.

Let this be the beginning of our daily empathy practice. See below for the daily journal entry! - sD

Entry 01 - Empathy Deficit

America and the world has been slowly waking up to the need of making soft skills, like empathy, real and mandatory within the communities and businesses we build and are a part of. Recently a friend, Amy Giddon (founder of Daily Haloha), shared a Scientific American article on LinkedIn called, “The U.S. has an empathy deficit”.

The article outlines the rise of empathy searches, the squishy definition of empathy itself, and then shares 3 ways to alleviate our empathy deficit:

1. Ask others how they are feeling and really listen.

2. Remind yourself that everyone is at the end of their rope.

3. Empathy for one person might be different from another, ask them what empathy means to them.

While I believe these are good things to focus on, I believe it completely overshadows self-empathy first. The notion that “everyone is at the end of their rope” gets closer to the grim reality of where we are currently at AND where empathy must start. Before being there for anyone else, where are YOU at, how are YOU doing, what are YOU feeling? I would define those that are aware and concerned about the state of our world as brittle. If you are like most, carrying a large burden of baggage with little energy for yourself and the world, the simplest of things can crack your patina. You’re a good person, GREAT person on the inside! Our personal forcefields are just super low and brittle at the moment.

What’s my daily empathy practice suggestion today (and into the future)?

Stop comparing yourself to others and others to each other. Stop it, it hurts everyone involved.

Taking a page from Meditation 101. When you do compare, recognize it, stop it, and just listen. If you must make a response and have zero energy use this line,

“I hear you, thank you for sharing. I’m too exhausted right now to dig into this with you right now.”

Happy Tuesday-ing!

sD