I spent last weekend down in Lower Alabama where my friend from high school owns a farm. On neighboring property there lives a donkey we’ll call “Jake.” On my friend’s property there lives a dog – his dog – we’ll call “Spot.”

Okay, not too original, but it serves purpose.

So as night falls, evening ritual is to go out and feed animals.

Out we go, 3 large carrots in hand – well, his hand. His wife and I are just watching. My friend calls to Jake who, having 5 acres to roam, is nowhere in sight. Spot is circling around my friend, jumping up, spinning around. I’m sure you’ve seen this. Spot has been trained not to bark, but he’s doing every other thing he can to attract attention, and acting ecstatic. Over a carrot??

“Spot’s so jealous, he’ll actually eat a carrot,” says my friend, as we walk along.

"If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, whole world belongs to you." Lao Tzu

In last issue, I talked about empathy as a core emotional competence for building relationships, influencing people, and getting buy-in based on ability to understand thoughts, feelings, and motives of another.

However, why is it that empathy is now recognized to be so important for personal resilience and well-being? It's because our ability to be empathic with others starts with our ability to be empathic towards ourselves!

Like so many other abilities and qualities that we've been taught (or admonished!) to practice with others –- charity, kindness, paying attention to others' needs first (also known as not being selfish), acceptance –- our ability to genuinely embody and demonstrate empathy depends on whether we can have it for ourselves.

Another way to think about empathy is through lens of acceptance and non-judgment. Our ability to be empathic with another clearly reflects acceptance and lack of judgment about them. Yet if we don't accept certain aspects in ourselves, how can we truly be empathic with others when we witness those same qualities in them?

Genuine and complete self-acceptance is a challenge for many people. Lack of empathy can show up as being hard on oneself (generally or specifically), or it can be a blind spot that is outside our awareness.

C.G. Jung named those aspects of ourselves that we disown as "shadow self." Thus, while we may not recognize ourselves as having certain "undesirable" traits, those are often very things we non-empathically judge and reject in others.

Where do people commonly lack empathy towards themselves? There seem to be certain key areas, that when challenged by someone else or triggered by some action we ourselves have taken, provoke self-judgment: