How to win people's hearts without spending money? The answer is empathy. Empathy is reading the heart, understanding feelings, and being with the other person. Empathy is the best way to win people's hearts.
As psychologist Carl Rogers once said, "People are moved when they receive full empathy." It is the same as being in a home or church. Most of the people who ask for counseling because of marital problems, instead of listening to the other's story and trying to understand, in many cases they fight by pouring their own grievances onto the other.
It is no exaggeration to say that most marital quarrels begin with a lack of empathy. Housewives, when their husbands yell at them, "What do women do in the home all day long?" who will say, "Oh, your right." Most of them will shout: "Oh, then I’ll make the money, you can do the housework!" And when the wife disparages the husband: "The men in other households make good money. Why are you like this?" Where is the husband who will say, "Oh, you’re right~ I am not a very capable husband? I am sorry."
The same is true in the parish. If you look at the cases in which believers follow a parish priest and when he leaves will remember him, it will be because he was able to empathize with the parishioners. When one of the faithful comes late for Mass, and the pastor during the sermon looks at the believer and says: "You have had a hard time coming. Sit down and take a deep breath", all the believers are moved.
However, if you shout: "How can believers be late for Mass?" or shut the church doors, the parishioners are left with scars, difficult to heal.
Most of the priests who scold and glare at believers do so because most of them have a personality disorder. At the same time, they take pride in acting like a pastor, but in reality, they lack empathy. The same goes for the assistant priests.
Children will not approach priests who punish children for chattering throughout Mass. Really wise priests read the minds of children. A certain priest saw the children talking during Mass and pointed out the child who was the loudest. Then he said, "Hey man! You look like so and so ( a well-known actor) so why are you talking so much?" Suddenly, the child shouted: 'Wow'! And from that day on, the child who heard that he looked like a famous movie actor changed.
We have affective empathy, emotional understanding; somatic empathy when even the body is moved; and cognitive empathy is understanding the other's mental state. Compassion and sympathy usually involve more of a passive attitude while empathy is a much more active attempt to understand the other person. As they say, it's walking in the other person's shoes for a while.
