For kindness to be your "default" mode, you must hone those other-related emotions such as empathy, sympathy, and compassion. Empathy and sympathy are similar, yet they differ in making others feel or respond. Empathy means experiencing someone else's feelings. It requires an emotional component of feeling what the other person is feeling. Sympathy, on the other hand, means understanding someone else's suffering. It's more cognitive and keeps a certain distance. Compassion is where action comes in.
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Empathy is a sense that you can understand and share feelings. This "shared" experience can generate a profound understanding because you attempt to know what it's like to "walk in their shoes." For example, your friend's father just passed away from cancer. If someone you know has passed away, you may feel empathy for your friend because you have "been there"—you remember how sad, lost, and alone you felt. Because of the shared experience, you think you know how your friend feels because you have been there. But even if you never experienced whatever your friend is experiencing, you can still feel empathy by mentally or emotionally “putting yourself in their shoes."
Sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune. Sympathy may not be received as well as empathy. Still, sorrowful sympathy can offer some warmth and support in the face of someone else's adversity or loss—if offered with sensitivity and sincerity. On the other hand, if you provide sympathy by feeling pity, it may generate feelings of alienation in others. You can often avoid this negative response if you come from a place of authenticity and sensitivity. Sometimes just being there silently for the other person can often be enough.
Understanding the Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy
Having empathy says, "I feel how you feel." Having sympathy for someone says, "I know how you feel."
Empathy requires being more aware of the other person's feelings, not your own. Empathy involves putting yourself in the other person's shoes and understanding WHY the other person may feel as they do. Sympathy involves understanding from your perspective.
Sympathy's favorite expression is "poor you." It creates a sense of pity over the plight of the person. Empathy's favorite expression is "I can understand how you feel."… "It must be hard." Making this type of connection helps the other person feel heard, understood, and valued.
Sympathy focuses on the surface meaning of statements, while empathy is sensitive to non-verbal cues.
Compassion
The literal definition of compassion means to "suffer together." It is a feeling that arises when you become aware of another's suffering and are moved to take action to relieve that suffering. It is not the same as empathy or altruism. Empathy is about the ability to take the other person's perspective and feel the emotion of others. Compassion is when feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. Compassion is more of an attitude, a way of thinking—it's a tendency to care for others and humanity, even from a distance. Compassion may reach further than a single individual to potentially masses of people with a particular ailment, experience, or hardship.
Two brief practices are included below to explore more about kind feelings and how they lead to kind actions.