I discovered this post on Seth Godin’s Blog. He titled it “Empathy.” I thought you might enjoy it. You’ve heard the saying, “walk in another’s shoes” or variations of it. So, is it possible?

I have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant.

And for most of us, we have no idea what it’s like to have $3 to spend on a day’s food, or $4,000,000 to spend on a jet. We have no idea what it feels like to be lost in a big city, no idea how confusing it is to go online for the first time, no idea what it’s like to own four houses.

Marketers and pundits and writers and bloggers and bosses pretend they are empathetic, but we never can be. Sure, we can try, we can be open to cues and sensitive to clues, but no, we don’t really know.

Being certain about how someone else feels or what motivates them is foolish. Don’t declare that you know exactly why someone made a choice or predict what someone is going to do next, and why. It’s a great parlor trick, but you’re probably going to be wrong. (I think the one universal exception is fear. We all know what it means to be afraid, and fear doesn’t change based on income or gender. The causes change, but the fear remains the same.)

Empathy is a hugely powerful marketing tool if we use it gently, being sure to leave lots of room for error. When we say, “oh, you did that to make a quick buck or you did that because you hate that guy or you did that because you’re a man…” we’ve closed the door to actually allowing people to write their own story and you make it difficult to learn what actually makes them tick.

While this was written with marketers in mind, what do you take away from it?

As many of you who read this blog may know I am bionic. I had open heart surgery in 1999 and since then have had five heart stints/stents. I was asked recently why I continually spell heart stent with and “i” instead of an “e” making it heart stint. Well, when it comes to being found on the web sometimes missepllings help one get found better than the correct spelling.

I have started an article site which is called: Articles You Want To Read, which will eventually have many different kinds of articles. The first two entries are Acne Treatment Products and Heart Disease Prevention. Go on, take a look or if you hear of someone who is looking for this kind of information, tell them about these two sites.