Empathic people experience several happiness benefits. For example, empathy often encourages altruistic behavior, and empathy-based kindness has been shown to increase cooperation and forgiveness, strengthen relationships, decrease aggression and judgment, and even improve mental and physical health.

Interestingly, research shows that happier people tend to be less aware of negative emotions in others despite rating themselves as more empathic. However, practicing empathy, regardless of the mood, is essential to create greater happiness for ourselves and others.

Practicing the critical components of empathy can help you better understand and interact with people in your life.

Make Listening a Priority

Before you can connect with what someone’s feelings, you must recognize what that feeling is. Listening is crucial—but not always easy.

When a good friend calls you and needs to vent about how stressful work has been or how tough things have been since their recent breakup, the emotion in their voice usually gets your attention quickly. However, it gets more complicated when conversations happen amid distractions and with less apparent emotional weight.

Empathy begins when you set the intention of listening for emotion. But first, notice the signals people give that can indicate their feelings.

Your emotions can pose a significant barrier when noticing what others are feeling. For example, when you are having a conversation and looking only at your feelings and how you can communicate them, you might not be leaving enough attention available to take in what’s happening at the other end. Making an effort to listen actively can help strengthen your emotional understanding and empathy.

Encourage Them to Share Their Feelings and Stand Next to Them Emotionally

Once you recognize emotion in another person, empathy puts you squarely in that person’s shoes. Empathy is not feeling what you would think but stepping beside yourself and adopting your emotions for a few moments.

Some research suggests that we succeed at empathy because of mirror neurons or brain pathways that fire whether we’re experiencing the stimulus or seeing someone else experience it.

Mirror neurons are responsible for getting your heart racing when you admire athletes running through a stadium at your favorite sporting event or making you recoil in pain when watching unfortunate blunders in a funny viral video.

When people become immersed in someone else’s grief, sadness, or irritation, this empathy can not only stand next to them and console them with greater understanding but also sends a message that they are willing to take on a painful emotion so that others don’t have to go it alone.

Make Yourself Vulnerable

Empathic connections are a two-way street. Allowing yourself to take in another person’s emotions fully can enhance your relationships, and allowing yourself to be vulnerable to others can amplify such connections.

When you share experiences of your own challenging emotions, like guilt, anxiety, and shame, you create opportunities for others to empathize with you.

Being vulnerable strengthens your empathy in two ways. First, feeling the value of empathy when it’s reflected back to you can deepen your commitment to being empathic for others. You also gain more comfort navigating challenging emotions in conversations with others.

It’s not easy to hold onto a conversation about painful emotions. However, if you deliberately train this ability in yourself by taking advantage of the opportunities when you have a feeling to share, you’ll be better equipped for the receiving end.

Take Action and Offer Help

If empathy rests on sharing negative emotions, happiness can suffer. For example, when people feel deep sadness for the victims of a natural disaster, they get closer to putting themselves in other people’s shoes.

But just feeling someone else’s pain, while it may enhance a sense of belonging and be understood if communicated, doesn’t maximize the opportunity to improve well-being. The advantage of knowing what another person is going through is that you can better identify what others need.

Because empathy means that you are adopting the emotion but not the tricky situation that gave rise to it, you are usually in a more empowered place to help.

For empathy to be most effective and maximize well-being, it is essential to feel the pain of another and know that you are in a position to do something about it.

In a classic study where participants watched another person receive electric shocks and were given a choice to help the person by taking the remaining wonders themselves, people high in empathy were likelier to step in and help even when they could turn away and not watch anymore. Practical empathy allowed participants to feel the pain of the shock enough that they wanted to help but not so much that they were reluctant to take it on themselves.

Empathy-Building Strategies

Improve your empathy by practicing the following regularly. Over time, you will find that your ability to understand and relate to the emotions of others becomes stronger.

Talk to other people. Make it a point to begin conversations with people you meet and see across your day-to-day interactions. While engaging in the discussion, pay particular attention to what that person feels.

Notice body language cues. This can include tone of voice and subtle shifts in energy.

Focus on listening. Manage both the distractions and your feelings that could quickly grab your attention, and work on staying emotionally attuned throughout the conversation.

Take action. Recognize that you can do small things to make a difference in someone’s life. Don’t just talk about it; find ways to actively help the person take action without taking away their learning opportunity.

Summary

Empathy allows you to understand others and gives you the motivation you need to make a difference, whether that means consoling a friend, buying a small gift for someone who needs it, or donating to causes helping natural disaster victims. Empathy becomes effective when you use it as motivation to do something about the problem.

When you see someone going through a hard time, listen and share and identify what you can do to help. The follow-through on empathy means initiating positive change for others. The fantastic thing about empathy is that when others begin to flourish, it also improves your life.