Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
This can be a really deep topic, but for the sake of this quick read, we’re going to interpret Empathy as thinking of other people – that they are important.
The connection of Accountability and Grit to Empathy is that with the first two you get your personal drive, energy, and direction. With Empathy you get consideration of those around you.
Think of it this way…. With Accountability and Grit, we’re a human wrecking ball. We are doing what we are going to do and going through anything that gets in our way.
The challenge is that a wrecking ball generally doesn’t care about what it hits or what it leaves behind. It just gets the job done.
Well, what about your partner? Your kids? Friends? Professional reputation?
Empathy is what gives you pause to consider your relationships.
Are you willing to miss the anniversary, again? How many of the kids’ games get relegated to less important? How many colleagues will lend you a hand if you throw them under the bus?
It’s not that every single conflict between work and the personal life will default to the personal life taking precedence. It DOES imply that it’s due some consideration. And there is a LOT to consider.
Your values, the uniqueness of an event, the nature of the conflict… it can be some seriously complicated calculus.
What’s also hard is that considering other people effectively extends the Grit needed because it theoretically impedes the goal.
This is meant to put the focus on the idea that there are thousands of interviews with people who are at the end of their life and you will struggle to find any of them that wish they had spent more time at work instead of with the important people in their lives.
Integrating Empathy in our life helps reduce the likelihood of being included in that statistic.
This, however, is still not the end of the story. We feel that to really get the most from life there is benefit to putting the three together in a cycle. Tomorrow, we share the Power of A.G.E.