If you’ve ever read anyone’s success story, then you have undoubtedly found out that their victories weren’t absent from previous failures and struggles.

In many ways, those past failures are what make successful people who they are today.

Recent research has shown that when we focus on both the failures and successes of our role models, we are much more likely to be motivated and inspired by them to improve ourselves.

This is because when we see ourselves going through similar struggles as people who we look up to, we can relate to them much more. We see them as humans, and imperfect, just like the rest of us – regardless of how perfect they may seem inside our heads.

By acknowledging the more humble, imperfect, and “human-like” characteristics of our role models, we feel much more capable of overcoming similar obstacles and achieving our goals.

The truth is that even the happiest and most successful person in the world experiences downfalls every now and again. We should therefore expect to have similar struggles when pursuing our own values and goals.

A related study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that students who learned about a topic in science, as well as the struggles scientists go through when discovering their theories, ended up better understanding the curriculum when compared to individuals who didn’t learn the history of scientists’ struggles.

Researchers say this is because students often hold a stereotype that scientists are big brained, super geniuses. In other words, they hold an ideal about who these people are – and it’s an ideal they can’t relate to. Therefore they think scientists are somehow “special” and different from us.

But when students learn about the background of most scientists – they find that they aren’t that special, and often times they go through their own frustrations and failures.

Their success is just as much based on hard work and perseverance as it is their genes or biology. Knowing this, students become more motivated and inspired to overcome their own struggles and frustrations.

The big lesson here is to be careful of idealizing mentors, role models, and other people who we may look up to. They are, in fact, human. And they often share much of the same pain we do when trying to improve ourselves and achieve our goals.

Once we understand that even the most successful people go through rough times, we feel more capable of overcoming rough times of our own.

Reach out to me on Facebook and Twitter

If you enjoyed this article and you want to follow future content at The Emotion Machine, I recommend following me on Facebook or Twitter.

According to the study, 68.4% of the mentally troubled said they “often felt happy,” in contrast to 89.1% of those who “often felt happy” – but didn’t have a mental disorder.

So while it is still easier to find happiness without a mental disorder, there is some evidence that mental disorders and happiness aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

Researchers had trained interviewers question volunteers about various psychological symptoms they may have been experiencing within the past month. They found that 16.5% of their sample fit into a psychiatric disorder. To test for happiness, the researchers asked only one question regarding how often the participant felt happy, on a scale from “never” to “always.”

(There are some obvious limitations to the design of this study. Asking only one question to measure happiness isn’t very conclusive, at all).

It was found, however, that those who suffered from alcohol abuse reported the same level of happiness as healthy participants. Meanwhile, those who suffered from depression and social anxiety had the lowest levels of happiness – although a significant number of these people still reported frequent happy moods.

The study also followed participants over time and found that those who reported higher levels of happiness at the start of the experiment also showed better recovery from their mental disorders.

I believe the broader lesson in this study is that the co-existence between mental disorders and happiness is indeed possible. And those who may suffer from a mental disorder shouldn’t fall for the “black and white” thinking that their disorder automatically means they will never be able to achieve happiness.

Empathy is the ability to recognize thoughts and feelings within another conscious being. It is a mental capacity in which we can understand the inner world of others – their beliefs, emotions, intentions, values, goals, and personal experience.

With empathy not only comes the understanding that other beings have thoughts and emotions, but also that these thoughts and emotions may differ greatly from our own. This makes empathy a crucial tool for understanding other people and getting along with them.

Psychologists distinguish two main components of empathy: cognitive empathy (knowing another person’s thoughts and beliefs) and affective empathy (knowing another person’s feelings and emotions).

The degree of empathy we have for others can be found on a spectrum. At lower ends, empathy only requires that we are aware of other people’s thoughts and feelings. But at higher ends of the spectrum, empathy may include actually experiencing one’s situation as if it was our own.

Some experts on empathy, such as emotion researcher Paul Ekman, say that these higher levels of empathy lead to a third kind of empathy: compassionate empathy, where we are so attuned to the thoughts and feelings of others that we are driven to alleviate their pain and suffering through kindness and charity.

Maybe you once saw a commercial for starving kids in Africa and it tore your heart out. You saw how much the people over there were suffering, and you felt an immediate drive to donate some money to the cause. This is just one common example of how empathy can drive us to be more compassionate and altruistic.

Testing Kids for Empathy: The “False Belief” Test

At a young age, we’re not very good at empathizing with other people’s point-of-view. Instead, we tend to think that everyone perceives the world in the exact same way that we do. Developmental psychologists often use this “False Belief” test to determine whether a child is capable of empathic thinking or not:

In this particular test, a child is shown a box of crayons and asked what is inside the box. Naturally, they answer with “crayons,” but the experimenter then reveals that there are in fact candles inside the box.

After this short demonstration, the experimenter introduces “Snoopy” into the conversation. She reminds the child that Snoopy didn’t hear any of their discussion that they just had, and then asks the child, “If I were to ask Snoopy what is inside the crayon box, what do you think he’d answer?”

The average 2-3 year old, lacking the ability to put themselves in Snoopy’s shoes, will answer with “candles.” But someone who has the ability to empathize would more likely answer that Snoopy would think the crayon box had crayons in it – because we know that Snoopy was unaware that the crayon box was filled with candles.

In order for the child to successful pass the test, they would need to put themselves in Snoopy’s place and understand that he has different knowledge about the situation then we do.

Within a couple of years, most kids will develop the empathic ability to see the world through Snoopy’s eyes. And as a child interacts with more and more individuals throughout their cognitive development, they will become more attuned to the fact that each person has their unique differences in perception, knowledge, and experience.

Children grow to understand that how they view the world is not necessarily the same as how someone else may view it. This is often the first step toward developing empathy.

Children who fail to pass the “False Belief” test after the ages of 4-5 have a greater probability of being autistic. Psychologists and parents often use this test on children to catch autism early, so preventive measures can begin to be taken. A lack of empathy is one reason autistic individuals are usually not able to function effectively in social situations.

Empathy and Evolution

Humans have evolved as social animals, who throughout history have depended on cooperation and strong relationships in order to adapt and survive in their environment.

Back when we were hunters and gatherers, we had to work together to find food and provide security for one another. Our ability to survive was directly related to our ability to empathize with others, respond to their needs, and thereby build trustful connections.

If someone lacked empathy, and thus an inability to build these effective relationships, then they would quickly be seen as a social outcast, and thus be ostracized from the group

Naturally, empathy also played a large role in the development of our parenting habits. Parents who better recognized the needs of their children, and how to respond to those needs, were much more likely to raise successful and adaptive offspring.

These are just some examples of the early evolutionary origins of empathy. Over time, our capacity and ability to empathize has grown more and more complex.

Jeremy Rifkin explains in the video The Empathic Civilization that as communication technologies developed more and more – from the printing press to the telephone to the world wide web – our capacity to empathize with others similarly expanded. He believes one day we might develop empathy toward the complete “biosphere” of our existence.

So at the beginning of our evolution we may have only empathized with close family ties and those within our community or tribe, but we now have the capacity to empathize with people all over the world through various communication technology (print publications, radio, TV, the internet, etc.) and also travel technology (cars, airplanes, etc.), which allows people to visit and experience more types of cultures and connect with more people than was ever possible before.

Why is Empathy Still Important Today?

The ability to empathize with others is still a very important aspect of our cognitive development. One reason is because we still greatly depend on healthy relationships with others in order to live happy and successful lives.

Most of us need to cooperate with people at school, at work, at home, or in public. And most of us crave a sense of belonging, as well as affectionate relationships with family, friends, and significant others. These things would be incredibly difficult to accomplish without empathy. How can we be expected to treat others with dignity and respect if we can’t put ourselves in their shoes?

In a very real way, we all still operate in “tribes,” they are just much greater in size and complexity than they were thousands of years ago (and they encompass both off-line and online relationships now). The need for empathy is still alive and well wherever there is social interaction taking place.

More broadly, empathy isn’t only relevant to building relationships, but also problem-solving and creativity. Being able to take on another person’s perspective can very often lead to answers and insight that we wouldn’t discover if we limited ourselves to our own personal, narrow world-view.

When we find ourselves experiencing difficulty in a situation, we can draw on others experiences for inspiration and motivation. In magnetic self-esteem, I show how putting ourselves in the shoes of role models like Bruce Lee or Michael Jordan can encourage us to pursue our own goals.

In the same way, a devout Christian may ask, “What would Jesus do?” in order to find insight on how to act in a certain situation. This, again, is playing on the skills of empathy – because by asking questions like this we are actively putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes in order to learn from their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.

We can similarly apply this model to other people. An aspiring baseball player may ask, “What would Cal Ripkin Jr. do?” Or someone aspiring to be a movie filmmaker may ask, “What would Charlie Kaufman do?” The point is we can put ourselves in the shoes of any kind of role model to help guide us toward certain goals. This is all a product of empathy.

This article only begins to scratch the surface of how empathy will continue to be one of the most useful skills in the 21st century. It aids everything from our relationships with others to our individual goals and motivation.

I hope this article helped demonstrate to you why this is such a powerful skill. In the future, I plan to write many more articles on empathy and how we can develop it further. To stay updated on these articles, feel free to sign up to my psychology newsletter.

According to Chi-Yue Chiu, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore:

“Distress following excessive self-praise is likely to occur when a person’s inadequacy is exposed, and because inaccurate self-assessments can prevent self-improvement.”

Researchers discovered this effect in students from both the U.S. and Hong Kong, suggesting that it may be cross-cultural. However, they found that students from Hong Kong tended to be more humble in their self evaluations overall, which was consistent with previous research supporting the trend of Asian cultures being more modest than Western cultures.

This finding shouldn’t be that shocking to readers of The Emotion Machine. I have long advocated that we take an honest and reasonable approach to how we view ourselves.

I like positive psychology and I think it offers many useful theories and practices for how we can benefit our lives. But this shouldn’t be confused with the “positive thinking movement.” The former is a scientific discipline, while the latter is a heavily commercialized and distorted industry with little scientific backing.

I’ve experienced the heartache of believing things like The Law of Attraction and The Secret first hand, and I’ve later warned about these dangerous trends in personal development – which often emphasize the importance of excessive self-praise and over-confidence, even when it is irrational and potentially very harmful.

When the self-help “guru” James Arthur Ray had participants go on a physically demanding “Spiritual Warrior” retreat that consisted of several days of fasting, and then spending hours locked in a sweat lodge, several people needed to be hospitalized after – and some even died. Ray believed that through excessive confidence and self-belief, they could overcome any physical limitations. His excessive confidence was wrong, and it had dire consequences for those who fell prey to it.

Of course, some level of self-praise and confidence is essential to our evolution. Because without any confidence, we can never be motivated to take the risks required to successfully adapt to our environment.

If a fish gets thrown into a new pond, but it is too fearful and avoiding of it’s surroundings, it will have greater difficulty finding food to survive. But if it has the confidence to explore its new territory and take calculated risks, it will often have a greater probability of discovering new means of survival, without being crippled by fear.

Self-praise is one of the biggest ways humans can build a more confident demeanor and be more motivated to take action, but it needs to be balanced.

Sports psychologists have demonstrated how athletes can use positive self-talk to improve their performance. But clearly overestimating our abilities can at times lead to some destructive outcomes.

Another study showed how overly optimistic people are susceptible to underestimating the risks that bad things will happen to them, such as getting cancer or getting into a bad car accident. This optimistic attitude can motivate people toward more reckless behaviors because they mis-attribute the risks of their actions.

Again, it’s about balance. Self-praise and confidence are good, but only when they are deserved and when they are grounded in reality. Trying to fool ourselves into thinking we are more than we are can only backfire in the end.

You can download a free copy of this software here. It’s available for both PC and Mac.

The premise behind the game is really simple to understand, but difficult to master.

Basically, in each mode there is a grid with 9 different positions (think “tic tac toe”). A box appears in 1 of the 9 positions along with a letter (“L,” “T,” “R,” etc.).

In the default mode, your goal is to look 2 steps back and identify if there is a match. There are two types of different matches: “position match” and “audio match.” Each round of the game goes through 20 steps, and based on how many matches you correctly found the game will rate you between 0-100%.

Here’s a quick visual diagram of what it looks like when you find a match:

As you get better, the game becomes increasingly difficult by increasing the amount of steps you need to look back (such as 3 steps or 4 steps). More advanced modes also include other kinds of matches like “color match” and “image match.”

In each consecutive mode, you have to juggle with more and more information in order to be successful. The game keeps track of your progress over time and you’ll notice how much better you become at short-term memory and focus.

Here’s a video tutorial of “Brain Workshop” from one of the designers:

It’s usually recommended that you use Brain Workshop every day for about 20-25 minutes. I’ve only been using the program for a couple weeks, but I’ve already noticed my brain seems sharper and better at handling greater amounts of information at once.