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Understanding is the key to finding inner peace, and that's what we're diving into today. I’ve learned that when I truly get what others are going through, I end up knowing myself better too. This episode is all about how understanding helps us judge less—both others and ourselves. We’ll also explore the difference between caring and empathy, which is super important for developing compassion. By the end, I hope you’ll have a clearer picture of these concepts and how they can lead to a more peaceful life.

Is there a difference between caring and empathy? Everybody believes they are caring, and almost everybody I talk to believes they have some form of empathy. What is the difference between empathy and caring? And does everybody really have both?

Takeaways:

• Understanding others leads to inner peace and a better understanding of ourselves.
• Empathy and caring are different; caring is about our feelings, empathy is about others'.
• Developing empathy requires us to think about others' feelings, not just our own.
• We learn through experiences and exposure, which shapes our understanding and compassion.
• Caring can sometimes be misguided when we project our needs onto others.
• Healthy empathy allows us to feel others' feelings without becoming burdened by them.

Navigating the complexities of life often requires a deep understanding of ourselves and others. I’ve discovered that this understanding leads to inner peace and reduces judgment, fostering compassion. In today’s podcast, I explore the differences between caring and empathy—two concepts that, while related, are not the same. Caring is often about our emotional responses to others, projecting our feelings onto them, whereas empathy involves genuinely connecting with and feeling the emotions of another. This nuanced understanding can change how we interact with others and ourselves.

I share my personal journey, filled with challenges that have tested my resilience, such as being paralyzed and facing bankruptcy. These experiences have taught me the importance of understanding life's struggles and how they shape our perspectives. When we learn to judge less, we open the door to compassion. I emphasize that empathy is not just a skill but a process that requires effort and reflection. It’s about recognizing that our initial reactions often stem from our feelings, while true empathy allows us to prioritize the emotions of others.

As we conclude, I urge listeners to reflect on their own interactions. Understanding the difference between caring and empathy can lead to a more compassionate and peaceful existence. By fostering empathy in our lives, we can create deeper connections and a better understanding of the world around us. Let’s work together towards cultivating a more empathetic society, where we can all thrive.

One of the things that gave me more inner peace than anything else was understanding.

How can understanding give me more inner peace?

Well, it meant I understood others, and in return, it meant I understood myself.

So I judged people less and I judged myself less, and that understanding led to more compassion.

And one of the things that really blew my mind was understanding the difference between caring and empathy.

And, yes, we know they're both different, but on today's podcast, I'm going to talk about the differences, and I'm going to give you that ability to see the differences so you can have more compassion and caring and understanding for others.

I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.

You might think Stillness in the Storms, I thought it was living deeper lives.

Hey, I'm losing the plot.

That's why.

No, not really.

I'm changing it back to Stillness in the Storms because that matches what I do more.

It feels more comfortable, it feels more natural.

It's more congruent with what I want to do.

It's my podcast, and the decision is final.

Okay, so Stillness in the Storms.

What does that mean?

It means I help you to have that little.

When things are going a little wrong or a big wrong.

So you're struggling and you're overthinking, and you haven't got time to sit down and take time out.

I help you to overcome those days, overcome those times.

And considering I'm paralyzed just below my neck, I've hit rock bottom, I've been bankrupt.

I've had so many problems in my life.

And I don't tell you to be a sob story.

I tell you because that's the reality.

And I'm a pretty positive, happy person.

I love my life.

I love nearly all aspects of my life.

But I didn't get there overnight.

I got there through learning to deal with and understand life, understand others, and understand my life and my journey.

So a couple of other things.

Housekeeping things.

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Not yet.

This isn't the world's biggest podcast yet, but it's going to be Law of Attraction.

Let's all think about it.

Let's all spend a moment just thinking about that right now.

You're listening to the world's biggest podcast, Stillness in the Storms, with your host, Stephen Webb.

Yeah, it kind of works, I think.

Nothing wrong.

Nothing wrong with a little bit of optimism, even if it's slightly misguided.

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Give me a like and a thumbs up.

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I'm going to do a new podcast every Tuesday evening.

Mondays just did not work for me because I'm on the city council and I do other things on a Monday and during the weekend.

Mondays, they slipped and I let you down.

So I've moved it to Tuesday, which makes things a whole lot easier for me, takes off the pressure.

So you're going to get a new podcast every Tuesday, provided you give me a review.

Right.

Okay, let's get on with today's podcast and we're talking about caring and empathy.

Let's talk about caring first.

What's caring?

Well, if you think of a child, when it's born, it doesn't care.

It doesn't care about the mum and it doesn't care about the parents, how tired they are.

It doesn't care about anything other than its own comfort, its own whether or not it's hungry, whether or not it gets its food, and whether or not it gets enough sleep.

It doesn't mind whether the mum's tired, exhausted.

It won't fall into your pattern of what you want the baby to do.

It'll do what it wants to do in order to try to fulfill its needs.

And then after maybe a few years, when they're really young, they start to look at animals and very often children, they'll go and collect beetles or they'll collect worms or something and put them in a tub and they might even like mice and animals.

And they.

And we look at them and go, oh, they're really caring.

And they do care about the animals because the animals make them feel good.

They're their pets.

That's what caring is.

You need something else to look after.

And the actual meaning.

I did look up the meaning displaying kindness and concern for others.

So caring is your feelings for somebody else.

So you're projecting.

Nothing wrong with that.

It's a good thing.

We have to develop caring.

We have to develop those feelings of caring before we can develop empathy.

Empathy's different.

It's not like a next stage of caring.

And I want to really iterate the differences because I said at the beginning of the podcast, a lot of my compassion and peacefulness now come through understanding others.

And I used to get so mad when I would see somebody keeping an animal in a cage that should not be kept in a cage, and am I still annoyed by that?

Yes, but I'm not annoyed by the person so much.

I'm more annoyed by human ignorances.

And let me explain why.

Somebody goes and gets, say a monkey or a chimpanzee and they take it home and they put it in a cage and they let it out and it's friendly and it's wonderful for a few years and then the chimpanzee grows.

An ego grows like a personality and it wants to fight back a little bit.

So what does it do?

It ends up being a bit annoying.

Now then this person then puts it in a cage and keeps it in a cage.

Now then we might look at that on the outside and get really annoyed by this person and say, you know, that's unfair.

How dare that she do that to that animal.

How dare they not let that animal free or give it to a better home or whatever.

Why don't they give it to a sanctuary?

Well, it's because that person really cares deeply about the animal.

But it's not so much they care about the animal, it's they care about their feelings towards the animal.

So if somebody come along and turn around and said to them, we're going to take away the animal because it's called keeping it in the cage, they'll say, no, no, you're not taking that away from me.

Hence the language.

You're not taking them away from me.

And I will be gutted if you take it away.

I will be hurt.

I will be devastated.

So it's not about the animal, it's about them.

And you recognize that with children and kittens and the animals they collect, they're not caring about whether that snail has a wonderful freedom of the garden.

They care about whether they can keep it in the house, whether they can.

They're caring about their feelings for the animal.

So to say they don't care is incorrect.

They do care, but they care about their feelings.

And that caring is.

You're projecting your needs onto the animal.

Now then, empathy.

Why is empathy different?

Well, empathy then develops later.

Empathy is feeling what the animal is feeling or feeling what the other person's feeling.

So if somebody, in the same instance, that person that's keeping their monkey or chinchilla then looks up and somebody comes along and says, right, well, you cannot keep in that cage any longer.

That's cruel.

They'll turn around and go, yeah, I love that animal and I'm going to be gutted not to see it.

But yeah, you're right, take it away to the sanctuary.

Because they put the feelings of the monkey ahead of their feelings.

And that's the main difference.

So, so they're now thinking about the perspective of the monkey.

They're seeing it from a different perspective.

It's.

It's the same as when children keep animals in like that.

I said about a snail in a box and they'll keep it in the house.

They're not thinking about that snail and the life of the snail and how the snail's feeling about it.

They're only caring about how they're feeling.

So when we open up our world to skillful or wise empathy, and I say wise empathy because a couple of podcasts back, I.

So the difference between healthy and unhealthy empathy, healthy empathy is, you know, I, I feel your feelings, but I'm not going to take your feelings on or at least run with them for too long.

I'm not going to hold them too long and I'm not going to let them burden my life because they're your feelings and I can feel them, but I don't need to become them.

Unhealthy empathy is becoming those feelings.

So you meet up with a friend and they're really down and they're suffering at the moment, and then we take on that feeling and then for the next week, we're then down and suffering.

That's unhealthy empathy.

And we normally develop the unhealthy before we go to the healthy.

It's like everything, everything we learn, we tend to learn the bad way of doing it first, and then we get the good way of doing it, then we improve it.

It's like software.

I'm a real geek, so think about it.

It's like software.

The first release, it's wonderful and it's new and it's brilliant and we all, like, enjoy it and then we see the problems with it and then we need a new release just to upgrade it a little bit to iron out the problems, the bugs it introduces.

So, yeah, I hope that enlightens you just a little bit about the difference between caring and empathy.

So when someone says, you know, my child's really caring or I'm really caring, think about their actions.

Are they really putting the animal or the parents feelings first?

Then to say to a child, you know, you don't care about your parents all that.

Well, they do, they do care.

Because if the mum was ill and, or if they were missing or something like that, they would worry and they'd be upset.

But have they got the empathy to be able to feel what the mum's feeling when the Mum's tired or run down.

Very rarely, very rarely does children develop that at a very young age.

It's normally when you have your own children, especially females.

When we have our own children, we have to develop that empathy for the children.

It's a way that we can understand how a child's feeling.

Why are they crying?

Not just they're crying, big difference.

So we look at that monkey in the cage and go, how would that monkey feel in the cage?

And then we would very often sacrifice our pain or we would allow our pain to give that monkey some room in a sanctuary.

And you can see it with an elderly woman, perhaps with 3,000 cats.

A slight exaggeration, but probably somewhere over 3,000 cats.

They're not thinking about how the cats live and whether they're happy, but how she feels about them and how much she loves them being in her life to make her feel good.

Now, the men, on the other hand.

Don't start me on men.

Men and empathy and the masculine side.

Oh, you men are hard work, hard work.

And I put myself in that category as well.

It's men and empathy just doesn't.

Of course, men develop empathy to some degree, but it's less often.

And even if they believe they are empathetic, they really aren't.

You know, how many times do men do things to people and you look at it and go, really?

Did you not know that was going to hurt them?

Did you not see how that was going to affect the children, how that was going to affect the relationship and the other person?

No.

They put their feelings first.

So like I said, understanding others and the situation they're in really opened my heart to them and it meant I judged them less.

If you're not, if you haven't developed the skills, then how.

You're not going to judge them, are you?

You don't judge a 4 year old because they're not great at algebra because they haven't developed the skill.

So why do we judge an adult that hasn't developed a skill, even if we think they should have done?

And yes, when you get to 40, 50, you should have developed empathy, but if you haven't had that life and experience to develop it, not a lot you can do about it.

There really isn't.

You know, we learn through exposure, we learn through experiences.

So thank you for joining me for this podcast.

Like I say, every Tuesday is going to be a new podcast.

Now, if you become a Patreon, you can choose the subject of the podcast.

You can literally choose what I talk about and you can also take part in live Q&As once a month.

You can also get a shout out on the show.

Like I'm going to say to Cheryl and Maureen, thank you my first two patrons, thank you to both of you and also get into group calls.

Oh you just get loads and loads of stuff becoming a patron plus also you support me in the work I do.

So if I help please help me to spread the word and get this to be the biggest podcast in the world.

Most awesome one that helps us have a little more inner peace.

So the link is in the first line of the description.

Take care of.

Thank you.

And this is the new Stillness in the Storms podcast.

I'm Stephen Webb, your host.

Take care.

Have a wonderful week and I will see you on a live meditation every day 2pm on my Facebook, YouTube and my Twitter account UK time.

Bye.

Namaste Sam.