Episode Transcript
This isn't just a podcast, it's a reminder. A reminder of what makes America Stronger isn't a headline or a hashtag. It's people from the ones building our homes to the ones rebuilding their lives, veterans, tradesmen, neighbors and volunteers, real people doing real things. Here we find common ground first, and then we work on our differences.
This is the collective perspective podcast where purpose, people, and progress mean. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Collective Perspective podcast. My name is Jeff and I'm here with my buddy Travis. What's up, Travis? Welcome back everybody. Glad to be here. Hey, Travis. How are you doing today, man? Doing pretty good.
Good. Today I'd like to talk about empathy and compassion. Let's do it. Let's, uh, let's dive into those two words. The reason I want to talk about them is because I believe that, and I've experienced where people using 'em interchangeably. And it just kind of dawns on me that they don't really know what the definition of these words mean.
And you, you, you seem to have a bigger touch with more people and, well, I don't know. We both see people out in public a lot, but you're seeing them on a different level than I do. Right. I see them. We see them on a professional level, but my level of professionality is very relaxed. Yeah, very relaxed. And not in your traditional role that you would see somebody, uh, employing compassion or, or at least empathy.
Well, plus two, your job, uh. Doesn't allow you to really maintain long relationships with your cus with your patients, clients, patients, residents. And they're there for a reason. That's not necessarily good. I mean, it's good that they're there getting treatment, but they don't want to be there. Nobody wants to be there.
Right. Well, maybe the employees, but, but, uh, uh, I think, I mean, I can empathize with that, but hey, um. The difference between empathy, I think a lot of people get, uh, empathy and sympathy confused. I think you're right on that. So, you know, I, I do see a lot of, uh, there's a, there's a lot of opportunity in my line of work to be empathetic to someone.
Uh, but there's also, you, you need to know when you're showing sympathy versus empathy. Uh, and that can be confusing to some, not just being confusing, but. It seems to me maybe that, well, let me clarify whether you know, the difference between, I'm not trying to question your, your know, uh, whether you're smart or not.
I'm just, I think a lot of people mistakenly use the words. I, I agree. Uh, for me, sympathy is something that someone. Uh, says you're seeing something. Um, in, in medical, the first letters of words tend to give a direction of where they are. Like, sympathy is what you can see. The s's it begins with an S.
Empathy is more, uh, it's, it's a deeper meaning. It's more of a feeling. I think that's, that's how I differentiate the two. I'm not gonna go around and be a word Nazi. But lemme tell you what sympathy implies. Sympathy and empathy are the same, but one is at a distance and one isn't. So sympathy is, Hey, I sympathize with you.
Uh, my sympathies go out to you on social media, and that's all you hear. Now you have to know where your boundaries are, right? 'cause. You want to show some empathy to someone and empath and have sympathy for them and show 'em, at least to some degree, that you care and you recognize that they're in pain.
Or maybe it's something that's good. 'cause it's not always bad. That's true too. Yeah. So to have success, one has to know what it feels like to succeed, but that person also. Should very well know how it feels to not succeed and how to fail. Yes, knowing how to fail is also another good trait to have. Right.
And most people that succeed, fail, fail, fail, fail, and then they start having success little by little, not everybody's overnight sensation. That's true. I kind of feel like I've gone off the path a little bit. So empathy is how? It's showing that you feel for someone like, uh, but what if it's something that you, what if it's something that you, uh, have never experienced yourself, that's when I think you can sympathize but not have an actual real understanding.
You, you can, you can understand what it is that they're trying to tell you, but you don't know. In your own being exactly what they're feeling. What I've been reading was that even though you don't have that same, or you haven't gone through that, you can pretty much sense that you've gone through every human emotion.
Right? Right. So at some point you could, you're like, Hey, I don't know. Or maybe you haven't had someone that died in your life or maybe you haven't. Um. Suffered, uh, demotion at work or something like that. Maybe nobody around you ha can empathize with you, but they're gonna ask you questions and I think that's where they can begin to like, Hey man, I know what it feels like to at least lose something and you lost it.
So I can empathize with you there. What is it about the job or whatever that you like so much that you know, or what do you, what are you worried about? Are you worried about finding another job? Right, and I, I think trying to understand someone is really a big key in showing some empathy towards them.
Yeah. But I think you're right. When you say sympathy is something that you see, empathy is something that you feel, we haven't talked about compassion yet. No, not yet. Compassion get, this is an action. Not every time. Does it have to be an action to where you have to, sometimes you just gotta show up just being there for somebody.
Right? Uh, it could be showing up to my, you know, there was a parade for Halloween and I didn't know that it was gonna be in the neighborhood where we live really close to my son's school. And my wife was like, I'm not going. And I said, well, I'm not either. I don't have time to. But you know what I said? I ha It just so happened I was leaving the same time the parade started.
I didn't know and I had to like take a detour, but there was like the beginning of the parade, so I stopped and it took five minutes, 10 minutes outta my time maybe. And my son was just really happy that I was there. That's, that's pretty sweet. That's good. Yeah. Just being there. Just being there. I didn't have to do anything but show up.
That's all we all have to do is just show up every day. Show up for the people that you work with, show up for your friends, your family. I can give countless times where you've shown up for me and vice versa. It's not something that we like. Keep track of like, well, I've, I've helped Travis five times.
He's only helped me twice. That's kind of being a little petty, keeping what they call it, keeping tabs. Keeping score. Keeping score. Yeah. Um, so I think it's, uh, there, there are risks though, of having too much empathy. Yeah, I, and, and I think I've run into that at work myself, or I, I get to know somebody or I've, uh, it's, it's used a lot.
I use it a lot anyway when I'm building a relationship with a new resident or new patient or new client, whatever the case may be. And sometimes it's, it, it, I, I use it so much that I don't. It's not even like I'm really trying, uh, because I've been through a lot of things. I've seen a lot of different things.
I've worked in a lot of different places, so, you know, I guess. A lot of the people that I work with and that I, uh, that are clients, if you will, uh, they come to me for a subject ma as a subject matter expert. And because I've seen it, I've felt it, I've been through it, I can help them with some of the emotions that they're feeling, that they don't know they're feeling.
Uh, get a, get an idea so they can at least start the process of working through those feelings. Recently, um, a family member reached out to me and they are, uh, having a struggle with a relationship with somebody else in my family. And I've gone into many conversations with this person to, uh, empathize with that person to, I empathize with both sides.
And what I have found is that. I could just, if I wanted to sympathize, be like, Hey, you guys take care of yourself. You know, see you, see you later. But what I found myself was like kind of empathizing too much and letting it stress me out and like, I can't, what's the matter? Phy a sneeze coming. Sorry. All goodness.
That's, anyway, so I. I, I found myself getting more involved in someone else's issues, uh, because I had empathy. Now compassion was like, I wanna try to do something about it. Trying to help each side. So you're trying to be compassionate to both of them, because again, they're family. You don't wanna see anyone hurt.
You wanna see things smoothed over. So here's the epiphany that I had. Is that as much as you want to try to empathize and have compassion for people that you love, sometimes, I don't know. The best way to describe it is, uh, let's say that, uh, we use the same water source, uh, a stream. And I noticed that it's starting to get murky.
And I keep on telling you, Travis, like, Hey man, it's starting to get murky. And you don't wanna listen to what I have to say. You, uh, you and everybody else start pushing me off to the side. I start stressing about it. The problem is, is that now, now that it's murky, I've pretty much gotten in the water and made it worse, right?
So the best course of action I feel moving forward in my life, learning this, uh, with, with this exercise that we have here is to, I. I can't wake everybody up, if that makes sense. I can't have everybody change and see what I see. Right? Because it's weighing in on my own personal happiness because I'm at a struggle to like try to get these people to try to get these people to like listen to me.
And I don't really see the podcast as that because the podcast, you can take it or leave it. I'm gonna put the information out here. We, we are, and if you listen to it and you gain from it and you become a better human being from it, then hey, Travis and I did what we set out to do Right. Then. That's all we're trying to do.
That's what we're here for. Yeah. So we're not trying to here to like try to belittle anybody or. Make them feel, but like maybe, maybe you should just take that extra step and do a little bit of research. You know how you and I have been discussing this topic for several weeks and we've done more and more research to where we can actually what, empathize with the topic.
And actually, you see what I did there, but, but you know, um. Be able to talk about it and have somebody wanna listen and, and help someone. So yes, that, that help. That's, that's our compassion. Trying to help someone understand the differences. I think what an interesting thing, uh, an interesting topic that we've talked about and that we continue to talk about, and it's not a broken record.
So what I mean by is intent. Intent. Every topic that we have discussed there is intent involved. So depending on the intent of the topic or the, the intent of the person behind it, it could go either way. Yes, we've used intent in a lot of our, uh, episodes even. Do you remember what the other one is? What?
What do you mean? I said there was two, two topics that continually come up. Intent and, no, I don't recall. Patterns. Patterns, ah, yes. Intent and patterns are basically if you can identify someone's intent and someone's pattern or a pattern that someone else is falling of others. You can kind of predict the intention or the, the next step of that said person.
And it's not like some superpower, well, maybe hearing is superpowers. 'cause I don't think people hear, I don't think people listen that much these days. They listen to respond and not to understand or they listen to for what they want to hear. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And I think, um. I don't have any empathy for that.
No. Again, um, you know, we can't force people to wake up, but, and I'll say this in future episodes, I'm sure, um, once you wake up or once you find the truth, so for example, if someone confuses empathy with compassion moving forward. I'm not going to, again, I don't wanna jump in the water and make it murky, but I'm gonna sit there and observe and like, okay, this person just doesn't know what the definition of that is.
And that's, that's probably the best way to go in, in my opinion. Uh, because I, I generally don't like to rock the boat too much. If you start correcting people, they take it as an attack on them. Personally, I think intent, um. Intent turns emotion into purpose.
Intent turns emotion into purpose, right? So if you have every intent to um hm. This is a note I had written down. Intent shows up here again like we were talking about, right? Intent is the difference between drowning with someone or throwing them a life vest, right? All right. Emotion without action is, is incomplete.
Meaning that if you are gonna have some type of emotion and, um. Emotion without action is incomplete. I think you can, personally, I think you can have emotion without action because you know, like I said, you can, you can feel something, but you don't always have to act on it. I think that's where we get caught up in, um.
Making decisions irrationally because we let our emotions take over and we act on the emotion. And maybe that's me being a little, trying to be objective and it, it can sound cold at times, but you know, yes, you, you should be able to acknowledge the emotion and then say, wow, this makes me feel like I should do something like this.
Let me take a step back and say, is that the right thing for me to do? And if it's not, then you sh I don't think you should do it. Or, you know, do whatever that action is. I, I, that's, that's, that's, that's how I feel about that. Yeah. Um, I feel what you're saying. Um, so when it comes to emotions, um, let's face it, we're all.
Just emotional beings. We are. And um, we have hearts for people. We have, um, empathy for people. We have sympathy for people. I think those are all good things. Um, compassion is showing up for that person. I don't think you necessarily always have to even talk. Right. You know, just being there by their side at the time of need, or being there by their side when they're there to celebrate and have it not be about you.
Yes. So that brings up the topic of our next series that we're gonna get into, and that is called Get over yourself, get over yourself, where we're gonna explore. The main vices and let us maybe be called, I dunno, my wife has said we're getting really into, heavy into psychology lately. Maybe that's just the, the road that we're on right now.
But I think, and what example I'm trying to express to people is that it only took a little bit extra work for me to see what the difference between empathy and compassion is. And I'm sure in these other vices, we're gonna find out what different meanings and definitions are and what it is. Is that like, so we learned something, we learned the definition of a word at some point, and then our memory of what that definition kind of gets convoluted.
Yeah. It gets convoluted by people not using it correctly. And I think that happens a lot. It happens way too much. So if anything, this exercise could be, uh, you'd be better at, uh, games and dictionaries and writing books, trivial Pursuit, uh, having actual conversations. But again, I'm not out trying to, uh, get you to change your mind.
I just want you to listen to what I have to say, and if it provokes you. To go out and actually do a little bit more research yourself, then, hey, I win. We win. That's, that's, that's what Travis and I are after. Yeah. We, we, we, we look for, we're striving to empower people to better themselves. Yes. We have no other, other motive except to, I don't know, maybe this is a good educational tool for, uh.
Our future generations and not, not only us, because you know, like I like, like we've said in previous, uh, discussions, this is more for us than anything we are learning along the way and getting to know, or. Being reintroduced to topics and words that have been misused a lot. So it's, it's nice to, and refreshing to hear a different take on it and hear what the actual definitions are or the actual, uh, meanings are.
You can take what I'm about to say on a political stance or a religious stance, but once you find the truth, there is no going back. I agree. Once you find the truth, you'll never be able to go back to the way that you used to think. And for that you're a better person whether you believe it or not. And it can be tough sometimes if once you see.
What it is that you need to see, uh, to bring other people to the truth, not your truth, but the truth, the actual definition. So I encourage you, if you don't agree with what we said about empathy, sympathy, and compassion, go look it up. Everything we said is true. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of The Collective Perspective Podcast.
Please like and share, this is meant to share and to. Let you grow interpersonally. Uh, I think once you can grow interpersonally and get past these certain topics that we'll be discussing, you'll be a better person, I promise you. Thank you guys. Thanks for watching. Peace Out.
