Empathy is first and foremost an internal quality. It is an attitude of loving, caring, and oneness with the participants in your life. In order to have true empathy, whatever is important to another person in your life must be equally important to you. Read more here ...

"Thousands of people driving many miles to rescue animals in need is not simply a community looking to help; it’s a community connecting their humane values to the enormous value of animals, and committing to saving their lives." Read more here ...

The major problem in trying to teach altruism or compassion is that you can’t reward those actions or you encourage selfishness. In other words, if you always reward a child for being kind to others, you are implicitly teaching them that they do nice things in order to get something in return. But what techniques can you use other than the reward-and-punishment method? Read on to find out ...

"Compassion and happiness are bound together. Being good to yourself—allowing yourself to have some rest time, for example—increases happiness. Being compassionate to others increases loyalty and commitment among colleagues and employees and creates a happier work environment. . . . The best kept secret to happiness is to be of service to others." Read on ...

Empathy is the most important skill in relationship building, but it's also the one that most of us need to work on. Although infancy is a critical time for us to learn empathy, we can nevertheless increase it throughout our lifetimes. And despite self-interest ruling today's me-oriented culture, we have the capacity to empathize anytime we choose to. Read on to learn five ways to increase your own empathy ...

Empathy is not the same as sympathy, which refers to feeling sorry for someone else based on their situation. With empathy, we are viewing a person from the inside as an equal, while sympathy means we are viewing them from the outside as a superior. Learn how empathy and its vital companion, active listening, can help us build stronger, more positive relationships. Read more here ...