Empathy affects every aspect of our lives—we need it to engage with each other genuinely, as it allows us to understand the feelings and thoughts of others. Unfortunately, we are not born with empathy, so most of us do not know how to handle emotions.  

If you feel you lack empathy, you're not alone! But you can work on cultivating it through perspective-taking. 

Why perspective-taking? The essence of this approach is to look at things beyond your personal view from the perspective of another person in order to better view or understand a situation and experience what they may be experiencing.

If you are curious about how perspective-taking can make you more empathic, this article highlights 5 easy methods.  

1.Prioritize Listening to Others, Not Just Talking

Poor listening habits can be a sign of a lack of empathy. If you don't give people a chance to talk, you deny yourself an opportunity to know how they feel or think about an issue. As a result, you might give insensitive responses that can make others feel bad.  

That said, empathy is an essential life skill, so even schools champion perspective taking by teaching it to students. 

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To improve empathy, you must know how to create a safe space for others to talk and value their opinions to encourage sharing. Practice active listening skills such as maintaining eye contact. When you do so, you make someone comfortable, allowing them to express themselves freely. Active listening moves you from thinking about yourself and how you want to respond to validating the other person's thoughts and feelings. 

2.Encourage Others to Open up with Meaningful Questions

Open-ended questions are another great way to improve empathy! Unlike the yes or no questions, open-ended questions require one to elaborate on the answer more. Therefore, they offer an opportunity for one to explain themselves, allowing you to understand them better fully! 

In addition, open-ended questions may also help create a better rapport and engagement. Eventually, you become empathetic because you can see the situation from the other person's point of view. 

3.Pay Attention to Non-verbal Signals, Not Just Words

Body language can help us better understand how others feel and where words fall short. It's hard to handle them correctly without understanding their emotions. Nonverbal cues help you interpret their attitude and feelings better and respond better. Besides, how you talk or listen also tells the other person if you care about them. 

So, when engaging them, take note of their facial expressions, hand gestures, eye contact, and posture and show empathy by matching them. An effective way to show empathy is to mirror other people's gestures, provided they are genuine and appropriate. That means if someone smiles at you, smile back.  

4.Read Diverse Fictional Books

Your world can improve if you read or watch more. Research shows that people who read fiction books have better social cognition. In layman's language, they are better at accurately interpreting other people's thoughts or feelings. So, if your perspective is narrow, try fictional books. 

Fiction shifts you from your world into another person's, allowing you to enter their mind and understand how they feel. It gives you a unique opportunity to explore circumstances different from what you are used to. For instance, it allows you to experience the world from another gender's point of view. It also gives you a new perspective from age, ethical, cultural, or professional viewpoints.  

Reading stories about characters from various backgrounds allows you to explore new perspectives, broaden your outlook, and become more empathetic. 

5.Practice Role-Playing to Strengthen Your Empathy Skills

Role-playing is an excellent way to transition into other people's worlds and experience things from a different perspective. It is exercised through acting, allowing you to step into different shoes and examine your behavior. This, in turn, lets you experience how others think and feel, which increases your awareness when dealing with them. It helps you avoid making premature conclusions or judging others.  

Through role-playing, you will get feedback about your empathy skulls, which will help you know where to improve. This way, you will experience how someone feels when they are not being actively listened to or when someone is not being empathetic with them.  

This will help you master improving your communication style to suit the situation.  

Conclusion 

Empathy is crucial for keeping society together. Can you imagine a world without empathy? Human progress would be much slower in such a world. Simple acts of kindness, like sharing, have helped us progress as a society.  

Perspective-taking is undoubtedly one of the best ways to cultivate empathy and build strong relationships with others. You can improve your perspective-taking skills by active listening, asking thoughtful questions, observing nonverbal cues, practicing role-playing, and reading diverse stories.  

So, practice empathy to improve your skills by showing kindness, making others feel comfortable, and encouraging them to share.