Ten Percent Happier
November 9, 2020

#298 How (and Why) to Hack Your Empathy | Jamil Zaki

Kindness and empathy are loaded propositions right now. When you hear those words, you might think: Eh, those are soft skills that won’t help me get ahead? Or: If I’m too nice, I will get trampled. Or: I need my anger to be effective. Or: I am plenty nice -- it’s other people who need to up their game. My guest today will push back on all of these reservations, and tell us how -- and why -- to, as he says, “hack your empathy.” Jamil Zaki a psychologist and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He wrote a book called, The War for Kindness. In this conversation, we talk about how our modern culture is suffering from an “empathy deficit”; why he believes selfishness is a sickness; how to avoid empathy burnout; and the academic criticism that empathy is actually an outmoded and unreliable human capacity.

Where to find Jamil Zaki online: 

Website: https://www.warforkindness.com

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