Imagine you see a family fighting. These days, you sure don’t have to look far. There are even TV shows dedicated to it.
We see this family on TV, and it might be easy to judge them. We might judge the father for his gambling addiction or the daughter for her drug abuse.
But what if we learned more about this family? We may not be so quick to judge.
We might learn that the father’s mom was an addict and that the daughter is bullied in school. With this understanding, we might go a little easier on them.
Now let’s zoom out.
Now, let’s look at our entire human family. Is it easy to judge our human family? Oh boy — you bet. And we do just that.
We’re brutal on ourselves. There are even humans who call our family “a cancer upon the planet.”
But what if we did the same exercise for our human family? What if we acknowledged that our ancestors went through unspeakable hardships so that we could be here? We might not be so quick to judge them — or ourselves.
Empathizing doesn’t mean agreeing. And if you’re in the business of helping people, empathy is a prerequisite. It’s the approach I recommend if you do marketing, that’s for sure. Empathy will get you far — judging people won’t.
