In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, we will be discussing:

• What is empathy?

• Why having empathy is a SUPERPOWER 😲

• Ways to practice your empathy skill

Before we dive into this topic,

What is Empathy?

How do I even begin? Empathy can be defined as the skill of being able to understand the feelings and emotions by putting yourself in their own perspective. Empathy has a lot of other "emotional skills” that are similar to it but not quite in the same sense. Skills like gratitude can be viewed as being very similar as well as sympathy. Sympathy and empathy are similar but different, Sympathy refers to the ability to feel compassion and sorrow for another person, but not necessarily feeling the depth of the other person’s circumstances.

This does sound cliché at first, but trust me, empathy is a very important skill to learn that can benefit you in any situation.

If you don’t mind listening, here’s the story of how I first discovered empathy and how it changed my life forever. And if you stick around, then you might learn some lessons in my story that can benefit you as well.

(Also, an important disclaimer, if I appear and act like an autist in this story, I was. This story is to show you how these past events were the triggering event that helped me grow into a more emotionally healthy person. Fortunately, I have move passed this point and leveled up a lot in terms of my own mental health)

Let’s go back to the past, approximately 1-2 years ago, I was a shell of the person that I am currently. I was also not nearly as emotionally intelligent then I am now. This was when I really getting serious in my “self-improvement phase” which engulfed my entire life around that point.

But even though I was technically changing my life for the better, I was still a bitter and resentful person. Stuck to the chains of my past, I had a big ego about myself on my own ambitions and carried this negative energy everywhere that I went. This was I getting into the gym, building muscle, meditating every day, gratitude journaling every day, and had a set routine to build the person that I was trying to become. I was very adamant in the idea that everyone needed to follow my path and to get onto self-improvement aswell.

I was also very deep into the self-improvement rabbit hole and became this social autist at this point of my life.

Now being the only person who took self-improvement seriously in my school at the time, I felt a severe sense of isolation. There was no one that I could relate to in my school, no one with the same values and interests that I had, and no one who had the same desire to get onto this path like I did. What I saw that time is that people were very content on living the life that they were living right now, but I didn’t accept or understand that at the time.

Overtime, this negative emotion that I’ve been feeling start to develop in this red, dark dreary haze of resentment and aggression. Although I did not say anything at the time, and luckily, I didn’t, I definitely did give off this energy that those types of people were not welcomed by me due to my set of values.

During this period of time, I did try to help some people get on the path that I was on, but it never worked out well. This bred another layer of resentment on top of the mental health problems that I was experiencing at the time.

I believe that the one major factor that really pushed me off the edge was that people were so blatantly obsessed with their own vices, such as doomscrolling on tik-tok, video games, vaping, drugs, etc. Every day, my own values were being challenged by people who did the complete opposite of what I was striving for.

So, you might be wondering “Wait, I thought that this is a self-improvement newsletter, aren’t you supposed to be going against those types of bad habits?"

My answer would be, yes, but the way that I going about it wasn’t the right way. That type of mindset that I had at the time was the perfect place for things such as resentment and arrogance to form. We’ll discuss this in depth in the later parts of the post.

But for now, let’s get back to the story 😎

This cycle of hatred and resentment continued again and again, the strange part was that the majority of the people in my school liked me, though it was probably because I was exceptionally good at wearing a mask that conceals my true emotions.

It wasn’t until much later, when I was able to go away from that environment for some time and re-collect on my experiences that I was able to actually grasp the skill of empathy.

After doing many sessions of deep introspection, journaling, and reflecting, that I able to pinpoint the exact reasons on where I felt this way towards a certain group of people.

1. I’ve realized that it was due to my own insecurities of not being good enough and the feeling of needing validation from others to prove my own self-worth is why I felt negatively towards people who don’t share the same values of “self-improvement” that I do.

2. I’ve also realized that I was never truly resentful or agitated towards these people, even though it seemed like it. I found out that it was because I was projecting my own weaknesses and setbacks onto them, basically I saw my past self as them and wanted them to improve their lives the same way that I had.

3. The KEY factor was that the content that I was consuming, regarding masculinity and self-improvement, really distorted my beliefs about other people outside of this space. The more that I consumed that type of content, then the more aggressive I was with people who did not share the same values that I did.

After figuring out these reasons, this was when I managed to tap into the skill of empathy and really shift my whole entire perspective in a positive light on how I view people and their circumstances.

Why Having Empathy is a SUPERPOWER😲

I hope you could tell in my story how bad resentment can be in terms of your own mental well-being as well as the daily interactions that you have with other people. Even though I deemed myself as going on a path of a righteous life, in actuality, it was a very sad existence living like this bitter and insecure person.

I know that this is a separate side point, but this is one of the main issues that I have with the self-improvement space in general, especially those in the manosphere regarding masculinity.

Now objectively speaking, someone who does play video games and scrolls on social media is technically a worse individual than someone who doesn’t. But that still doesn’t mean that we should hate people based on their own hobbies and interests that they indulge in. So far as we can see on YouTube channels talking about self-improvement, there is quite a clash between enjoying in simple whilst also working hard and the other stance of only working hard and ditching the instant gratification habits.

There are definitely downsides to both mindsets, like one where you can become too lazy and then on the other side, you just become a social autist where your ego blinds you from being able to improve. The reason why I’m talking about this now is because I see a lot of people falling into this trap of “We must only do the good habits and if you don’t do the good habits then you are a bad person” type of mindset.

Objectively speaking, you are a better person if you ditch the bad habits and work on improving yourself, but it is that negative mindset that I see far too many people get trapped under that leads to that depressing and bitter lifestyle. I assume that it is one of the reasons why the self-improvement space gets such a bad reputation in some cases.

I just wanted to touch on this point a little bit in this post since we are talking about empathy and resentment, but I’ll go further into detail in future posts about this topic.

I hope you can see why empathy is such a vital skill to have, especially if you are really serious in self-improvement. Empathy is a superpower because you are able to take a look at the circumstances of another person and realize that they are the reason why they are this because of certain experiences in their past.

Once I was able to see the positive side of other people who did not have the same values that I did, then I was able to fix this inner turmoil that had going on for so long. So, when I see someone who does play video games, eat junk food, etc., then I am able to go “It was due to the circumstances of their own past that has caused them to overindulge in these bad habits, but I’m not going to judge them because I would have done the same if I was in their position”.

See how much your perspective shifts when you frame it in that way? This can even work when you deal with people who are aggressive towards you. Instead of thinking “Damn, that person is an asshole, I hope their family dies” or something like that. Instead, once you learn more about this person, you can reframe your mentality of “Oh, the reason why they act this way is because of something that happened in their past and now they have used me as a target to lash out and let out their frustrations on me. They aren’t bad people, but there is only the product of their own circumstances”

Once you are able to detach away from your own emotions at that moment, then you are able to rationally gauge this situation from a different perspective. A perspective that counters the build-up of hate and resentment, but rather empathy.

Now, this doesn’t mean that what they did was right in any way, but empathy allows you to see the bigger picture and not let the actions or words of other people get into your own mind. It’s not that you are looking down at them or being condensing, but you begin to pick apart at their character and really understand why they are the way that they are.

Once you are able accomplish that, then the negative emotions that you harbor onto that people suddenly disappears. This is because when you understand their circumstances, that you make them appear more human than what they once appeared. Your able to go into interactions with the perspective of “I understand why you act this way now and it’s not going to get to me, I’m able to read you like a book and see your true motives due to an experience in your life that have caused you to act this way”.

The more and more that you improve your empathy with others, then the harder it is for negative emotions like resentment to foster. It is because now that you’ve analyzed their character, that their negative actions towards you do not seem to faze you anymore.

With empathy, the aggressive and hostile person suddenly turns into this insecure and damaged child because their parents used to beat them when they were a kid and now, they are transferring that pain towards other people.

Seems like a weird example but that is often the reality of the situation. I’m not saying that it’s always related to child abuse, but it is often their own past experiences that they had experienced as a kid that caused them to act this certain way. Basically, they were the product of their own circumstances and misfortunes.

Also, it doesn’t always have be the example of the angry and hostile person, but I used it because it is a good way to represent on how empathy can be used effectively.

Of course, for my situation, I was more of the angry and hostile person than it was for other people. But I was able to use it effectively as well. Instead of seeing people as inferior and worse because they didn’t follow the same path that I did, instead I change my perspective to “The reason why turned out to be this way is because that is how they were raised and the due to the influences of social media, but that doesn’t make them a bad person because I would have acted the same if I was placed in the same situation”.

I started to see them as a product of their own circumstances rather than the lazy and inferior people that the self-improvement and masculinity space lead me to believe.

This ultimately changed my whole entire perspective and improved my mental health for the better. You don’t have to be in the situation as me to experience positive results from empathy, but my story was just to show you on how you can turn your resentment into empathy with just a mindset shift.

Ways to Practice Your Empathy Skill:

I hope that you found this post helpful and gave you even more encouragement to practice empathy in your daily social interactions. But how do you practice your empathy skill you might ask?

Like how the heading suggests, treat empathy like a skill in a video game that you need to level up. If you notice that you don’t use empathy in your daily interactions, then your empathy skill is probably quite low. In order to level up their skill, all we need to do is to practice this skill in the real world.

The best way to do that is find opportunities in where you can use empathy, it doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, it is the consistency that matters most, big or small.

For example, if you find yourself in a situation where you find someone from your workplace or school who lashed out at you, then you will use that opportunity to use your empathy skill. Instead of being resentful, then operate from the perspective of “The reason why they acted the way they did is because their car broke down in the morning and now, they are venting their frustrations at you. It is not a personal attack but rather they are acting based off of their own circumstances.

It may take some analyzing before being able to be empathic in some situations, but this is just an example and is up to your own current situation and interpretation.

Once you found that opportunity and took action on it, then you will successfully earn exp in the empathy skill. Do remember that the purpose of empathy is to not Cottle or accept the unjust actions of other people but rather use it as the counter to resentment. Using empathy prevents you from developing resentment towards other people.

Resentment may seem like the easy choice in the moment, but you must be able to detach yourself away from the situation and learn to feel empathy instead. In an effort to stir up poison and harbor negative emotions towards toward other people, then you end up just poisoning yourself. It is a lose-lose situation that doesn’t help both parties.

But then again, if you do not feel like you are able to use empathy in your current situation, then I’ll will be discussing the other virtues of emotional intelligence that will allow you to progress using the empathy skill. Empathy is one really important skill, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. In order to completely master the principles discussed in this newsletter such as mental health, then it is important to learn all of the other virtues of emotional intelligence aswell.

That will be discussed in future posts on the Peak Performance Newsletter, so feel free to subscribe around in order to be updated to my latest posts.

Let me know in the comments, did you enjoy this post? Did you hate it? Did it help you out? Let me in the comments below.

I’ll see in the next edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, peace ✌😎