Welcome to NextLetter, where Frederik Pferdt helps you become one step closer to your next opportunity.

The Powerful Lesson of Plunging Pants

On a recent Saturday running errands with my kids, I pulled up to an intersection. There, a man at the corner was standing holding a sign asking for help. 

My 8-year-old daughter rolled down her window to offer money, and I noticed that, in the man’s other hand, he was holding up his oversized pants. 

To accept our gift and some of our groceries, he’d have to drop the sign or drop his pants.

He chose to put down the sign.

There’s a lot that I—and the world—could ask about the man’s circumstance. What happened?  What part of society failed him? What could he have done better?

But for these purposes, we could also make a very simple observation with a powerful lesson: The guy needed a belt to keep his pants up.

There’s a very good chance that if you asked the man what he wanted right then and there, he’d say food, money, drink, or shelter. “Belt” would have never crossed his mind, because it wasn’t a pressing need. But that doesn’t mean a belt wouldn’t help in some small way.

This is really what Expansive Empathy—another dimension for a future-ready mindstate—is all about. Can you look past what’s on the surface and see—really see—what other people may need?

Now, my family and I carry a bunch of belts in our car so that we can offer them to those who may need them. And we always get big smiles when we present them with this unexpected gift. Did we solve the homeless problem? No, of course not. But did we identify a small problem in someone’s life and help erase it? We like to think so. 

Expansive Empathy is looking beyond what people are asking for to dive deeper into their needs. When we do that, we open our minds to new perspectives—to think about the way others may feel, which can surely change the way we look at the world.

In a world that’s often viewed as binary—my way and no other way!—we’d all benefit from practicing empathetic thinking by trying to see other people’s needs, points of view, and approaches to the world.

We, of course, should practice it when we have conflicts with other people (at work, at home), and we can also use empathy when it comes to problem-solving and creativity: How would others approach something that is challenging in your life? 

Perhaps the most interesting way to think about Expansive Empathy is to apply it to your own life. That is, can you have empathy toward your future self?

Let me explain: In one study where students were asked to imagine themselves in the future, they could do so if it was 10 years out (a good job!) or even 20 years out (more money! a nice relationship!). They didn’t fare so well when asked to picture themselves 30 or 40 years out (it was a much blurrier picture).

When given VR headsets with programmed images of what they’d look like in that timeframe, it became much easier to imagine their future selves (maybe sicker, chubbier, grayer), and that allowed them to be more empathetic to their own situations—that perhaps they’d make better choices to avoid future problems.

That’s one of the most powerful uses of empathy—applying it to yourself and understanding that tomorrow’s you may be different than today’s you.

Try it with a self-meditation exercise. Close your eyes, and focus your attention on your breath. Ask yourself a few questions: How will I look in the future? Who will I be surrounded by? What activities will I be engaged in?

Maybe your needs in the future will be different than they are today. And maybe understanding that will change a bit about what you do, how you think, and who you are right now.

Above all, Expansive Empathy—which is about connecting one human experience to another to create and build bridges to your future—centers around one question that you can ask of others and yourself, as long as you’re patient enough and honest enough to allow the answer to come out: How are you really doing?

Use that question to guide how you relate and interact with others as one of the means to help you build a future-ready mindstate.

Quote I Love

The Upside of Empathy

For my good friend and former colleague Astrid Weber, Googler and User Experience (UX) practitioner, empathy is about understanding that so many people come to a situation/product with different perspectives. Seeing other people’s situations is crucial to opening minds. One time, Astrid and I did an experiment where students from Stanford ate breakfast with students from the California School for the Blind in Fremont, and we blindfolded the Stanford students. This was a fast-track to empathy where the students developed ideas afterwards that could help anyone to identify products more easily using technology, for example. 

Astrid says that some growth often best happens when people are open to learn and open to feedback—and expose themselves to new situations.

“When you constantly place yourself in different situations and meet new people, you become more aware of who you are and how the world works,” she says. “Empathy is about being human together. It’s about seeking community.”

Switching Sides: An Experiment

Next time you’re in the center of a conflict—maybe you’re trying to make peace at work or at the dinner table—instead of feeling like you have to come down on one side or another, try this:

Have each person in the conflict argue the other side.

This simple switch in perspective might help them see something they hadn’t thought of, and it can help either solve the conflict or better reach a compromise.

Note: You can also do this with yourself. When you feel adamant about something that you’re in a conflict about, try talking through the counter-perspective. Why would they feel the way they do? Try it, and see how that changes your perspective on the problem at hand.

Help Create a Better Future for Others

Many of us are living during a time in our lives when we’re taking care of senior parents. Truth is, so many people in this older demographic are mistreated because their needs and desires are so rarely considered. But what if you took a different approach?

Instead of doing what may feel like the easiest thing, ask them what they want out of their evolving living situation. You may learn a lot about what makes them happy, how they can help mentor younger people, how they can play a role in the lives of younger generations. Certainly, there will always be limitations when it comes to health and finances, but truly understanding the value of our older generation is one of the most powerful uses of empathy.

And here’s another way of thinking about Expansive Empathy in a similar scenario. After spending time with my parents this summer, I learned that what they want to leave behind for me was nothing (I mean materialistically, like “stuff”). They sold most of the items in their house as they showed deep empathy for me and my sister so that we don’t end up with stuff that we need to take over and don’t know what to do with (which we’d probably either fight about or give away for free anyway). They’re choosing to leave behind not material goods, but love and compassion–thinking about us and what we might want, not what might be easiest for them.

Simply thinking through the problem and challenges from their perspective may give you a new perspective on what comes next. You can apply that same practice to anyone you’re trying to help. Don’t just help with solutions that are best for you. Think about the problem holistically.

The more empathy you have, the better your solutions will be for everyone.

Let me know about a time you saw Expansive Empathy in action. Write me by hitting reply to this email, and I may share your experience in a future NextLetter. My new book, What’s Next is Now, is available now.