You Never Know

I am spending a lot of time learning and better understanding humans. Empathy, as I have repeated over and over, is the single most…

You Never KnowI am spending a lot of time learning and better understanding humans. Empathy, as I have repeated over and over, is the single most…


I am spending a lot of time learning and better understanding humans. Empathy, as I have repeated over and over, is the single most important characteristic I weight on other people.

Of course, there are other important traits, but, to me, empathy is a competitive advantage. I am definitely not the world’s best empathizer. Far from it. But those who can really understand people — the way we think, the way we move, the way we make decisions — those people are set up for long term success.

Company builders — the successful ones — are able to empathize with their customers. So much so that they know exactly what their customers want.

Anyways — back to empathy.

One thing I’m learning is understanding why people are acting a certain way. Things like ego and external validation are surface level things that lots of people (including myself) are affected by. They are not bad things, by any means.

I found that it is much easier to find critiques of other people without truly understanding them as a person.

Something to always keep in mind is that you never know what other people are going through.

We often glaze over that fact for our own convenience or satisfaction but it is really something we should not take lightly.

The world is hard. Bad shit happens to good people. The least we could do is spend some purposeful amount of time trying to understand it. We must not only make an effort to understand ourselves, but also understand others and how they operate. More importantly, answer the question why they do what they do.


Originally published at gonen.blog.

Tagged in Life

By jordangonen on May 22, 2017.

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Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.