Understanding Others

“We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.”

Bill Clinton

Self Care/Self Love

In order to understand others, we have to first understand ourselves. Self care and self love is fundamental to truly understanding others. One way to express care for oneself is to have an intention to not criticise or judge ourself. With practice, this non judgement of self, can deepen our understanding of allowing others to be who they need to be in any given situation.

Empathy

Empathy is the way of seeing the world as someone else sees it. When you have empathy, it means you can understand what a person is feeling and understand why people’s actions made sense to them. Empathy helps us to communicate effectively with others. It is one of the foundational building blocks of great social interaction.

Choice

In any given situation we have the power of ‘choice’. We have no control over other people’s behaviour however, we do have a choice as to how we respond to the them.

Compassion

To be compassionate means to sit in the space of shared humanness. Compassion supports and improves personal relationships and flows from a willingness to let go, to see the other person’s humanity. We have to separate the act from the actor. 

Compassion is a key component to understanding others. Here are some qualities of compassion:
 

• Connection
• Empathy
• Listening
• Understanding
• Kindness
• Acceptance

The first step to knowing ourself is to become aware of our own thought processes and behaviours. When we have a greater understanding of how we ‘show up’ in the world, it becomes easier to demonstrate the qualities of self love, empathy and compassion for ourself and others.


At The Alchemist Within we assist you to understand others by:
 

• Firstly exploring how well you know and care for yourself
• Working with you to see how you currently relate to others and what you would like to improve
• Providing you with new skills to better relate to others