Growing up I often heard my best friend's father Nick say, "Show me who your friends are and I'll tell you what you are!"

Well, that was usually followed by a long speech about why his son Frank should not have hung out with certain people.

I was like a second son to Nick so I would get to listen in on Frank getting yelled at. By that time, I had already been homeless and off streets and working my way through High School, so I never thought of hanging out with types that Frank did. Of course I was no angel but, I chose my friends as carefully as I could.

Frank never got point back then, but Nick knew very well about power of association.

You see Nick, grew up only son of an entrepreneur and brother to six sisters. Since he was baby boy, he got a lot of attention and love from his father. Although all of children did, Nick got just a little more.

Nick's father owner of a motel and a construction company could rival strength and attitude of strongest of strongmen of his day and even ours. He grew up with same mentality of his father AND strength to boot!

The problem with Nick was that he associated with street gangs of his day and didn't listen to his father when he gave him same speech, "Show me who your friends are and I'll tell you what you are!"

Associating with wrong people didn't end there though, later in life he ended up associating himself with some of most ruthless mobsters around and as time went on, Nick gained both wealth and bad habits these guys had.

Finally days came when his acquired gambling addiction took all of wealth away. Although he could have lost his life many times, it took loss of his money to finally stop associating himself with these people.

Jim, a 42-year old engineer was teaching his eight-year-old son how to fly a radio-controlled airplane. As airplane was taking off, Jim instructed his son to push control stick on radio to right. He did and airplane turned to right.

This was repeated several more times until airplane turned full circle toward son, ready to land. “Push stick to right,” said Jim. This time, however, plane turned left. “Push stick left,” Jim said. Now plane turned right, as if it suddenly had a mind of its own.

“I’m confused,” said son. “How do I know which way to push stick when plane behaves differently depending on if it’s flying away from me or toward me?”

“It’s simple,” said Jim. “Simply imagine you’re in plane and push stick accordingly.” This cured problem.

What a great lesson in empathy – ability to experience world from another perspective, often perspective of another person.

As an anonymous English author wrote: “To empathize is to see with eyes of another, to hear with ears of another, and to feel with heart of another.”

Why is empathy important? The real world bottom line is that lack of empathy leads to poor communication and a failing to understand others. Lack of empathy leads to all sorts of problems in our world. Nations go to war, people are killed, couples divorce – all for a lack of empathy and understanding.

It is natural to become angry when frustrated or irritated with people who do or say things at variance with our worldview.

To manage anger, it often helps to see our anger as a combination of their behavior and our lack of empathy. While we cannot control other’s thoughts, feelings or behaviors, we most certainly can increase our empathy skills.

To control our anger with increased empathy, three basic skills are required: listening, self-awareness and acceptance.