Challenge Your Worldview and Increase Your Empathy
A simple practice to challenge your beliefs and increase your empathy
“Fish don’t know they’re in water.”
The significance of this saying is that because fish are born and live in water, they can’t contemplate a different environment and don’t know any other way of being. The same is true for humans. As we grow, we start to develop patterns of thinking and being that are so engrained that we don’t realize we’re swimming in the water of our beliefs.
One of the most powerful benefits of coaching is helping people recognize the “water” aspects of their thinking. By asking thought-provoking questions that push the client out of their current engrained ways of thinking, they suddenly become aware of the water (ways of thinking and being). They then get to decide if they want to continue those patterns or if they want to choose a different way of thinking.
This process is not always comfortable, but it’s vital for growth. Otherwise, we can stagnate and become frustrated that the patterns that got us to our current place in life won’t help us reach the next place we want to go to—or might even prevent us from becoming who want to become.
Challenging our thinking patterns and worldview not only helps us grow, it can help us increase our empathy. When we can shift out of old, set patterns of thinking, we can see things from a different perspective, which helps us better understand another person’s perspective—with their own engrained ways of thinking and being—that are different from ours.
Here’s a simple exercise to help you challenge your thinking and increase your empathy:
Choose something you have a very strong opinion about; something that is an important value to you. It could be something like the importance of a college education.
Create an avatar or persona of someone who has the opposite opinion. It could be someone you actually know, but if not, make one up.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What would cause someone to think a college education isn’t necessary?
What life experiences or background would make someone adopt this belief?
What are the benefits of not getting a college education?
What is the 10% wisdom in this perspective?
If I embraced this belief, how would that affect my life and other beliefs?
Asking these questions should help you step out of your viewpoint and start to see things from another perspective. And you can ask these questions of your own beliefs.
For example, let’s say you firmly believe that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. This perfectionist worldview often causes you stress. Try this mental exercise:
Visualize an alternate version of yourself who isn’t a perfectionist.
Ask yourself what it would be like to not be a perfectionist.
What would you feel?
What would you experience?
How would it benefit you?
What would it cost you to embrace this perspective?
Visualize a familiar scenario where being a perfectionist typically stresses you. What would be different about that situation if you weren’t a perfectionist?
This week, you can increase your conscious leadership by challenging your patterns of thinking and being. Expand your empathy by trying to see things from an opposing perspective. And examine the long-held beliefs that may no longer serve you. You may be surprised at how the world looks when you see it through different eyes.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
P.S. I just published my first note on Substack Notes, and would love for you to join me there! Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. I plan to use it for things that don’t fit in the newsletter, like work-in-progress or quick questions. See you there!
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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