The Empathy Challenge

Empathy, simply put, is the ability to see things from another person’s point of view.

It helps us to find common ground and move forward together. It helps us learn to see the world with greater depth and clarity. It’s a skill that invites us to question our own sense of certainty, and to grow into a more understanding person.

At yet, some people recently, have begun to cast this invaluable skill as some sort of threat. That if we are to humanize others and be curious, we are on a slippery slope to…something bad, I think.

At the same time, there’s also plenty of people who recognize empathy as something more than a nice-to-have skill but rather, a necessity. And tragically, I’ve even begun to see empathy weaponized as a corporate tactic, built into customer service reps and AI bots in order to pacify people with legitimate grievances, rather than to understand.

So today, amidst all of this, I challenge us to reclaim empathy and start using it generously.

The Real Work of Empathy

Here’s what nobody tells you about empathy: it’s not a feeling. It’s work.

It’s the active choice to pause your own narrative and ask: what’s happening for them right now?

And that’s hard. Because your brain is wired to protect you, to prioritize your story, to make sure you come out looking okay. Empathy asks you to set that aside temporarily and sit with someone else’s reality.

Not to fix it. Not to judge it. Not even to agree with it. Just to see it.

In my book The Lovable Leader, I wrote about how the foundation of trust is built on care—and care requires empathy. You can’t genuinely care about someone without first understanding what matters to them, what threatens them, what they’re carrying.

But here’s the thing: empathy isn’t just about the warm, fuzzy stuff. It’s not just for moments of grief or celebration. Empathy is most critical in conflict, in disagreement, in the moments when you’re absolutely certain you’re right and they’re wrong.

Why Empathy Breaks Down

We’ve talked about responsibility, protection, sacrifice, resilience, and courage over the past several weeks.

Every single one of those challenges required you to step outside yourself. To consider others. To understand what’s at stake beyond your own experience.

And if you struggled with any of them, I’d bet money the struggle wasn’t about capability. It was about empathy.

Because without empathy, you can’t identify what others need protection from. You can’t determine what’s worth sacrificing for. You can’t build the kind of resilience that serves a community. And you can’t find the courage to stand up when someone else is being harmed.

Empathy is the connective tissue between all of these challenges.

But most of us don’t practice it consistently. We practice it selectively—with people who look like us, think like us, vote like us. We practice it when it’s easy, when it costs us nothing.

And we abandon it the moment someone challenges us, disagrees with us, or threatens our sense of being right.

The Empathy We’ve Lost

As I grew up, it never occurred to me that empathy could be anything other than automatic. I thought everyone just had it.

So yeah, it turns out that’s not true.

Empathy is a skill. And like any skill, it atrophies when you don’t use it. It gets easier when you practice it. And it fails you when you’re tired, defensive, or scared.

Over the past few years, I’ve watched empathy drain out of our conversations. We’ve replaced it with reactivity. With certainty. With the need to be right more than the need to understand.

And I’ve done it too. Truth is, I still do it. I catch myself mid-argument thinking: “I don’t care what they went through, they’re wrong.” I’ve felt that pull to shut down, to stop listening, to protect my position at all costs.

That’s the moment empathy is most needed. And that’s the moment it’s hardest to access.

What Empathy Actually Requires

In one of my previous posts called Empathy is a Superpower, I said that empathy isn’t just understanding what someone is feeling—it’s the practice of getting out of your own head and seeing reality from a different angle.

But here’s what I want to add: empathy also requires you to hold space for contradiction.

You can deeply understand why someone believes what they believe, and still know it’s harmful. You can see how their lived experience shaped their worldview, and still refuse to accept that worldview as truth.

In The Superhero Code, I defined empathy this way:

I will always try to understand other points of view, even if I do not agree with them, and I will challenge views that are biased or harmful to the humanity and rights of myself or others.

That second part matters. Empathy doesn’t mean acceptance. It doesn’t mean staying silent. It means understanding deeply enough to know why something is harmful, and being equipped to respond with clarity instead of rage.

The Empathy Challenge

This week, I’m challenging you to practice empathy in the places where it’s hardest. Here are four ways to challenge yourself to deepen your empathy.

1) Try to see from the perspective of someone you disagree with.

Pick one person—online, in your family, at work—who holds a belief you find frustrating or wrong.

Don’t argue with them. Don’t try to change their mind. Just ask yourself: What would have to be true for me to believe what they believe?

What experiences, fears, or values would lead me to that conclusion?

You might not come up with an answer. But the exercise itself may shift something in you.

2) Notice when and why you stop listening.

Pay attention this week to the moment in a conversation when you stop taking in what the other person is saying and start preparing your rebuttal.

In those moments, empathy is fading fast. That’s when we’ve decided we already know what they think, and we’re just waiting for our turn to correct them.

When you catch yourself doing it, pause. Take a breath. Ask just one more follow-up question instead of making your point.

3) Practice separating understanding from agreement.

At least once this week, practice saying this out loud: “I understand why you see it that way, even though I see it differently.”

You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to compromise. You just have to acknowledge that they’re a human with a perspective shaped by their experiences, just like yours is.

That sentence alone will defuse more tension than you’d expect.

4) Act on something you learn.

Empathy without action is just observation. It’s passive. It’s safe.

If you understand someone’s struggle this week, do something about it. Offer help. Adjust a policy. Speak up when they’re being dismissed. Make space for them in a conversation.

Empathy isn’t complete until it changes what you do.

Why This Matters

We’re living in a world that’s increasingly fragmented. We’ve sorted ourselves into echo chambers where everyone thinks like us, talks like us, reinforces what we already believe.

And we’ve convinced ourselves that the people outside our bubble are enemies, idiots, or beyond reach.

That’s not (always) true. But it will become true, far more often, if we stop practicing empathy.

• If we stop doing the hard work of understanding people who are different from us.
• If we stop asking questions and start making assumptions.
• If we stop caring about why someone believes what they believe and just write them off.

Empathy isn’t about being nice. It’s not about avoiding conflict or pretending everything is okay.

It’s about staying connected to our shared humanity, even when it’s hard. Even when we’re angry. Even when we’re scared.

Because the alternatives of disconnection, isolation, and dehumanization won’t lead anywhere good.

So this week, practice empathy. Not because it’s easy. But because it’s necessary.

And because if enough of us commit to it, we might actually find a way forward together.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

If you liked this post, then you will LOVE my newsletter (The Infinite Impact)
and my learning community (The Superhero Institute).