Episode 8 – Compassion & Empathy

Empathy and compassion. We need boatloads of it right now. Society in general is going through a crazy period and it doesn’t feel like there’s an end in sight, and it’s affecting people in loads of different ways.

Whether that’s financial, mental or even physical, sometimes, we’re all on the same struggle. Maybe a different story, but we’re all struggling. Different industries are taking different hits, especially the hospitality industry. They’re taking the brunt of this at the moment, and you know for many restaurant owners or pub owners, they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s the same for people that are working in sales and working in recruitment.

I run a creative studio with Chris and it’s a remote-first business. But when we have the lockdown earlier this year, I have to tell you – I struggled with it mentally. I’m used to talking to people through a camera on a laptop whether that’s through Zoom or Skype, but taking the choice away from me to be able to leave my house and being stuck looking at the same four walls – it was really difficult and I can understand how it is for many people out there.

We’re now going through another period where people are losing their jobs, being made redundant and there is a potential that we could go into another lockdown, and it’s quite scary for me and I’m sure it is for a lot of you as well.

But what I think we’re missing is compassion and empathy.

I see across social media that there’s a lot of bashing of kinds of people in certain industries reaching out that are doing sales. And it’s hard to actually see people do that. I mean I’ve never had to do sales. I’m not good at it. But there are people out there that make their livelihood off doing sales doing recruitment, and I’m not saying that they are an innocent party. I’ve received numerous emails and messages across all socials and platforms where, you know, recruiters are trying to reach out to me and they’re trying all different tactics, but I have to say it doesn’t de-humanise us if we just spend a couple of minutes just replying to their email and just helping them to move on to the next thing. These are people that they rely on on making these sales to bring in extra income to help them and their families survive.

It’s a very difficult time right now for us all and I think what we need to do is rather than focus on the negatives, we need to be pushing more of the positives. We need to be focusing on what more we can do to help society and it doesn’t have to be monetary values. It can be your time. They can be just providing information or just giving someone a call to give them your support.

So be kind.

And be happy.