What it is to be empathetic...at least today. Life is fluid, the explanation to follow may not be true for a year from now or two decades in the future, but it is a part of being empathetic regardless of how important it may seem. Empathy as well as compassion have many components. I don't think we can use every aspect of kindness in each situation, but I think to have knowledge of the different ways to be empathetic help to include as many different ways as possible so as not to get angry from assuming someone meant harm, which allows them to do harm whether they had the intention or not.
If you want to be around empathetic people, if you want to run an empathetic company, if you want to call the customer service dept of any company and you want to be treated with empathy and respect, you have to give it.You have to know it to be able to recognize it to know when you are being treated with respect. Your idea of respect will be different from anyone else's idea because each of us has had different experiences creating various feelings toward behavior and reaction.
I have explained almost everything I do for most of my life. What it was seen as was not me looking how to be empathetic, but instead it was viewed as complaining. I now know that most people I encountered didn't know what it meant to have compassion. I learned how to hone my wording (thanks to the internet for the ability to reach out to people where I wouldn't have had the chance otherwise) and not put blame onto anyone including myself. In the past I wanted to find ways to fix or work on something even if it was finding another way for myself to look at it. Since no one understood what I needed I wasn't able to nurture my skills or to be nurtured, which is why I share my knowledge. I also didn't want pity, another wrong view of what people thought I was trying to achieve. I don't want pity. Never did. I wanted to find solutions. As I speak with other people today I learned they, too, don't want pity...pity means to feel sorry but not to do anything about it. That's not healthy nor fun in any way.
To be empathetic is to be more open with your thoughts. Get over/work through your fears by being vocal. Each time you do this you will receive mixed reactions from everyone. Use that to learn how to handle difficult situations if that's what you need help with, use it to get over awkward feelings from talking to strangers (this is my goal this year and I can report that I am very happy with what I have learned), talk about your thoughts and fears to learn how to quickly move on from feeling attacked. Turn it into curiosity of how other people work. More often than not, people end up reiterating what I say so they just needed to work with an idea and put it in their own words.
To talk about your personal thoughts and ideas works with children and adults. For children it will expose them to new things, for adults it will either encourage or scare them. The only difference between children and adults is that children don't have all the fears built up that adults do. Children have a curiosity and a drive to learn while adults may have been driven inside their head out of fear of what others will think of them. Adults appear more opinionated, but I don't think of people as being opinionated. I see people working with thoughts and ideas and they may not be comfortable adding to those ideas, also known as growing, which appears as opinionated and judgmental. Show interest in someone else's ideas, learn how to not feel attacked with each experience, and you will help others grow while you learn what you need to learn for your own growth.
Sometimes we have to wait. Do you ever feel annoyed that some people take a long time to understand? (time is relative in this sense, which is to say that the amount of time you feel it should take will be a different amount of time for almost everyone else.) Instead of looking at it as being held back, use it to learn how to encourage others. Don't encourage people to think the way you do and don't expect others to think the way you do. Simply encourage other people to think and learn. This way you are not waiting for the topic(s) to morph and grow, you get to learn how other people work. You will be multitasking.
Have fun with your daily interactions. No longer dread them, but look forward to both the good reactions and the negative reactions. Look into what you did to see what was good and look into what you did to create the negative reaction. You may not have done/will do anything to receive negative reactions, but at least make sure you aren't expecting positive reactions and then getting angry when you don't see what you want.
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