Focus activity: Putting Yourself in Another Person's Shoes

1) What does it mean to "put yourself in another person's shoes"? What personal qualities are necessary to be able to see things as someone else does?

To me, "putting yourself in another person's shoes" means to be empathetic. This quality enables a person to understand and feel concern for others situation or feelings and to identify with the problems or situations of people, together with understanding their thoughts and feelings. Also, when there is conflict, empathetic people will always look for the best solution for both parties, and do not like to impose his or her own opinion as he can comprehend and understand other people from their perspective on the view of the matter. Besides the basic of being empathetic, one must also be respectful and caring. If a person does not even respect or care for other people, how is he ever suppose to understand him as he will never even be bothered to think about other people.

2) What makes it possible to adopt a different perspective? What is difficult about the experience?

It is possible to adopt a different perspective if you have ever experienced it for yourself. After experiencing it for yourself, feel the pain personally, then you will be qualified to be able to empathise with another person facing the same problem as you had. You can never fully understand anything without experiencing it for yourself. For example, when we see handicapped people with casts or broken or fractured legs, we would normally express our condolences to that person, but we never really understand actually how pain he feels because we never experienced it for yourself. Therefore this makes empathy hard as we are unable to experience so many things for ourselves and are therefore unable to fully put ourselves from other people's perspective.