Self-Awareness and Empathy as Trainable Skills

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I’m going to open today’s newsletter with what might be a controversial opinion: 

I don’t believe in natural talent.

I believe in training, practice, and passion. 

When you see someone who has mastered a skill—such as playing an instrument, performing a one-armed handstand, or becoming a chess grandmaster—what you are seeing is the result of hours upon hours of training and practice, and the passion necessary to sustain that level of effort for years.

Every Skill is Trainable

I believe every skill is trainable. The geometry of our bodies or the neurobiology of our brains might make some things harder or easier, and when these things give us an advantage, they get called “natural talent.” But I think training and practice are more important. I think you can have all the “natural talent” in the world, and it won’t amount to anything without sustained training and practice. Personally, I like this perspective because it gives me control. My genetics, childhood nutrition, and fate itself are not determining the course of my life and abilities: I am. I have the power to train myself to be good at whatever I want. And so do you.

If you need some convincing of the power of training over natural talent, I’d like to introduce you to László and Klára Polgár. 

László was a psychologist, and he was convinced that with the right upbringing, any child could achieve world-class expertise in a given field. In other words, László believed that training mattered more than natural talent. When he proposed marriage to Klára, he did so with the explicit goal of raising children and running a grand experiment on them (called “their entire childhood”) to prove his theory. Now, that is a bold marriage proposal! Klára, a teacher, accepted. 

László and Klára chose chess as the field within which to train their children. Each of their three daughters, Susan, Sofia, and Judit, were homeschooled with a strong emphasis on chess, exposure to high-level play, and consistent, rigorous training. As a result, they went on to raise not one or two but three elite chess players, two of whom became chess grandmasters (GMs). For reference, there are only 1730 GMs worldwide, and only 42 of those are female. Despite chess being a male-dominated sport (yes, chess is defined as a sport by the International Olympic Committee), and neither László nor Klára being an elite-level chess player, they raised three female chess champions. This is the power of training.

[Note: If you want to learn more about the Polgár sisters, I first learned this story in James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and I highly recommend this book in general.]

The Value of Self-Awareness and Empathy

That brings us to self-awareness and empathy. Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and to picture how others perceive you. Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings and motivations of other people. These are both highly valuable, versatile skills for both your career and personal life. They, too, are trainable.

But why should you want to train for improved self-awareness or empathy?

First, having a heightened sense of self-awareness will allow you to make better decisions. 

Understanding yourself and your emotions is critical to being able to choose a response rather than giving a knee-jerk reaction. Imagine that someone at work behaves in a way that bothers you: say they interrupt you frequently in meetings or don’t give you credit for your work. If you give an angry knee-jerk response that is less productive than if you spend time examining your anger, why exactly you are angry, how to get what you really want, and then choose a calm, strategic response. Self-awareness allows you that space to reflect and decide instead of reacting.

Self-awareness also allows you to make better decisions on your own behalf. Knowing yourself allows you to avoid career decisions that will make you unhappy. It enables you to make good choices and take strategic steps that will enhance your skill set and career success.

Empathy, in turn, is a skill that is built upon self-awareness. How much harder is it to understand someone else and why they are behaving a certain way if you can’t answer that same question about yourself? A solid foundation of self-awareness gives you, in turn, the ability to understand others. And, unless you are an evil genius living in a remote island volcano with a bunch of minions that are obligated to obey your every whim (sigh, someday…), you are going to have to work with other people. The better you understand your coworkers, the smoother your interactions will be and the more stress-free your work environment.

Effective communication is built upon empathy. If you can empathize with your audience—and really put yourself in their shoes to better understand their question or gauge their reaction—you can offer your answer or pitch your idea in a way that is more impactful than if you go in blind without an understanding of your audience.

Training Self-Awareness and Empathy

I hope that I have convinced you that:
a) training matters more than natural talent and
b) self-awareness and empathy are valuable skills worth training.

Next, the important question: are self-awareness and empathy actually trainable skills? Well, I probably spoiled that with the title of this newsletter, but YES! Yes, they are.

The following are some concrete, well-documented ways to train these skills (see the References and Further Reading section below for full details).

Training Self-Awareness
  • Journaling and Self-Reflection: Regularly practicing self-reflection is critical to developing self-awareness. Because our minds can be like squirrels—running around, bouncing off trees, digging holes in random spots, and generally being easily distracted—journaling is a valuable tool for slowing down and performing self-reflection in a more focused manner. Whether you enjoy a pen and a physical notebook (my preference and recommendation*) or a digital note-taking app, regularly finding time to write down and process your emotions will improve your self-awareness and help you identify patterns or areas for improvement. For more ideas on starting a journaling habit, check out this Life Kit Podcast on journaling or the book Atomic Habits, which covers journaling among many interesting topics.

    * While a bit of a debated topic, some studies show that the slower, less-automated process of physical writing (vs. typing or shorthand note-taking) enhances a person’s ability to internalize the information written. Ultimately, your preferred method is best if it allows you to be consistent.
  • Mindfulness Practices: Mindfulness activities like meditation, yoga, and breathing practices can improve self-awareness. Returning to this idea of our distractible squirrel minds, meditation helps us to be more aware of our minds and their squirrel-ness. This is called meta-cognition: the ability to think about (or be aware of) our own thoughts. Meditation builds the skill of metacognition by spending time noticing our mind and gently working to quiet it. Breathing exercises increase body awareness, and practicing yoga can create a space for emotions and thoughts that we have been avoiding. As a regular yoga practitioner myself, on several occasions, I’ve simply had to stop in the middle of my practice for a solid cry because yoga finally allowed an upsetting experience that I had been avoiding to come to the surface. By regularly practicing mindfulness in different forms, you can develop a greater understanding of your emotional responses and how they impact your decisions and interactions with others.
  • Seek Regular Feedback: I see feedback as a gift and an opportunity. Feedback is how we improve our performance and ourselves. Critical feedback can be hard to receive; it can sting and prick our egos, especially when it’s true. But, intentionally seeking out feedback from people we trust is an incredibly effective method for improving our self-awareness and discovering our blind spots. It’s also easier to receive feedback when we have asked for it under controlled circumstances as opposed to being blindsided by it! Find friends, colleagues, and mentors whom you trust to give you feedback on your performance, behavior, or working style, and spend some time thinking about ways to incorporate that feedback into your mindset and habits. (Maybe also journal about it!)
  • Consider Talk Therapy: Talking about mental health and seeking help for mental health concerns have long been unfairly stigmatized. But you don’t need to be in the middle of a mental health crisis to benefit from therapy. You can think of therapy as a special kind of feedback. A good therapist can help you explore your emotions, reactions, and patterns so that you become aware of them and, thus, more self-aware. This can be intense and challenging work, but with the right therapist as a guide, it can be well worth it. I meet with a therapist about once a month, and it has improved how I handle stress and interact with others.

    Unfortunately, therapy can also be expensive and difficult to access. Many employers offer confidential “Employee Assistance Programs” (EAPs) through which employees can receive a limited number of free therapy sessions. Insurance providers keep directories of in-network therapists you can explore (but these can often be out of date, so always cross-confirm with the therapist that they take your insurance). There are a growing number of online therapy options, and if you are a student, many campuses offer free mental health services.
  • Honorable Mention: Personality Tests: A scientifically sound personality test, such as the Big Five Inventory or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, can help you identify aspects of your personality you may not have been aware of already. However, these kinds of tests often cost a lot of money and may or may not tell you something new about yourself (after all, most are based on self-reporting). Free personality tests can be of variable quality or require you to give away personal information. However, personality tests can also be fun and informative; just approach them with a healthy dose of skepticism. Psychology Today has a compilation of personality tests; I make no attestation to their accuracy, but the tests are free with only a zip code requested.
Training Empathy
  • Reading Literary Fiction: Literary fiction typically emphasizes character development and explores human experience. A well-constructed work of literary fiction will put you in the mind of a complex, well-developed character (or characters) and allow you to see things through their eyes. This is a guided form of empathy because the author puts you in someone else’s shoes via their writing. The experience of looking through someone else’s eyes, even a fictional pair of eyes, will build your ability to see things through the eyes of the people that you interact with in real life.
  • Take Improv Classes: Improvisational theater, aka improv, is short-form theater, often comedic, where scenes, dialogue, and characters are invented spontaneously with just a few starting guidelines. It’s the theater version of building the plane as you fly it. Actors engage together to develop the story as they go, requiring quick thinking, reaction to, and interpretation of the other actors’ cues. Thus, practicing improv trains empathy, and it has been used to improve the empathy of medical students (whose bedside manner matters a lot!). You can take improv classes in person or online, and if you’d like to learn more about this concept, especially with respect to science communication, I recommend Alan Alda’s book, If I understood you, would I have this look on my face?
  • Put Yourself in Others’ Shoes: This is the learn-by-doing approach to empathy: intentionally practicing empathy to get better at empathy. Spend some time reflecting on interactions that you have had with others. Examine their behavior and try to imagine why they behaved that way. This can be especially helpful for moments of conflict, and journaling these explorations can bring more clarity to the exercise. You can also do this in preparation for an interaction by trying to envision how someone will respond and then, after, comparing your prediction to what actually happened. If your prediction and the reality turn out to be different, you can then examine why that is. With trusted friends, you can also ask them about what motivated their behavior. Self-reflection will improve your self-awareness; this form of reflecting on the behavior of others will directly improve your empathy. 
  • Intentional Listening: Listening and avoiding assumptions removes barriers and takes the guesswork out of empathy. Being intentional about listening and doing your best to understand what the other person is saying, both with words and body language, gives you a better understanding of their position. With a better and more accurate understanding, it is easier to empathize with them. Intentionally setting aside distractions and working to give the speaker your full attention is hard but is also a trainable skill and one that enables empathy. It also shows the other person that their feelings and perspectives matter to you, which they will appreciate. Wanting to be heard and understood is one of the most human desires of all.
  • Ask Open-Ended, Diagnostic Questions: In addition to listening carefully, asking open-ended and diagnostic questions to gain a better understanding can help you empathize with the other party. Examples of these kinds of questions include: Why do you say that? How did that make you feel? or What do you think about that? These are questions that assess the situation and encourage an answer that isn’t a simple “yes” or “no.” The answers to such questions will provide you with insights into how the other person is experiencing the situation, enabling you to better empathize with their situation.
Conclusion

I believe that training and practice are the most critical ingredients to accomplishing mastery of a skill and that every skill is trainable. This includes self-awareness and empathy. Self-awareness gives us the power to choose a response rather than react so that we can make good decisions on our own behalf. It is a foundational skill for empathy, which, in turn, enables us to successfully navigate relationships and communicate with others effectively. Ultimately, these skills can help us succeed in both our personal and professional lives, and they are within reach for anyone with the passion to practice and improve them. I hope that you find the above suggestions on training your self-awareness and empathy useful in your journey for self-improvement and skill mastery.

First published in the Virtuous Cycles Newsletter on 4.18.2025
By Christina C. C. Willis

References and Further Reading

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