Self-Awareness - Lisa D. Foster, Leadership Coaching & Training

Naming Feelings: The Next Step in Empathy | My Gratitude Project Day 8

November 8, 2025

When empathizing, there is another step beyond mirroring: naming feelings. If you want someone to know that you empathize with them, try naming their feelings. Naming feelings can be a little tricky because you can’t ever 100% know what someone else is feeling. The key is to listen closely enough that you can imagine what you would feel in that situation. If you have listened enough to understand their circumstances, it’s just a small leap to name how you would…

Empathy is Non-Judgmental and Transcendent: My Gratitude Project Day 3

Empathy is non-judgmental. As soon as you start judging someone—labeling them good or bad, right or wrong, should or shouldn’t, and the like—you have ceased empathizing. The point of empathy is simply to understand someone, no more, no less. Empathy cannot be about you or your opinions or how you would do it. Like you, everyone has their reasons for doing what they do, reasons that have built up over time. Decades of habits and experience that have led us…