Social Consciousness – Part 3
“How to cultivate it?”
Social consciousness simply means being aware of what others are feeling through what they are saying and how they are behaving. It also means being aware of the world around us and how we interact with and impact this world and vise versa. Increasing social awareness means improving on our skills to connect with others – verbally, nonverbally, and in the community. As stated in the second part of our blog “The Importance of Social Consciousness” it seems as if SC depends on three interrelated aspects. Firstly, the way we view our world, secondly what information we expose ourselves to and thirdly how we think or apply critical thinking to these. Today we will be discussing 3 methods to help develop our skills in SC. These skills are (1) developing empathy, (2) picking up on social cues and being a part of your local community.
These skills are (1) developing empathy, (2) picking up on social cues and being a part of your local community.
Method 1 – Developing empathy – aka Put yourself in someone else’s shoes.
Empathy is vital for authentic relationships, genuine communication, and problem-solving. We are social creatures; we constantly find ourselves in situations where we could be more empathetic (or empathic – the words mean the same thing). Consider the following situation:
- Imagine your friend just found out one of her parents passed away. Maybe you have no or limited exposure to someone close to you passing away. What do I say to my friend? Well, you can consider how you would feel to hear this news and respond how you imagine you’d like someone to respond to you, if you were in your friend’s shoes. You might say, “I’m so sorry to hear this. How are you doing?”
Let’s look at a few ways in which we can develop this skill.
1. Identify your own emotions. You cannot understand what other people are feeling until you learn and label your own emotions. For most people this is very difficult to do. A few basic ways to help identify your feelings are to –
- Talk to someone. Sharing feelings out loud with others helps you get feedback, and also helps you sort through them as you talk.
- Write in a journal. Write down what’s going through your mind and help process and name your feelings.
2. Be an active listener. Active listening helps you develop empathy because you are fully listening to the person talking (with your eyes and body language as well as your ears). You will also echo back to the person what you are hearing them say.
- Be focused on the person talking. Put down your phone or other distractions and point your body in the direction of the speaker. Make eye contact with the person.
3. Reflect back. Let the person know how what they are sharing with you makes you feel.
- You can say, “I am so frustrated after hearing this story about the care your father is receiving in the frail care unit.” The other person will likely either agree with your statement (“Yes! The staff’s driving me crazy!”) or point you more toward how they are truly feeling (“I am actually so sad to see my dad getting frailer not being able to help himself anymore”). Either way, you further understand what this person is experiencing and feeling, thus building empathy.
4. Collect stories. Learning other people’s stories helps us develop empathy for others, because we have been given a glimpse of what it is like to be that person. Human beings seem to be hard-wired to retain and learn from stories. Many powerful stories tend to resonate with us long after they are told.
- Listen to other people’s stories.
- Read more books.
5. Find common ground. Look for common interests with another person. This can be a steppingstone toward a deeper understanding.
Method 2 – Picking up on social cues
1. Watch body language. Watch people’s body language in different situations. Notice how much people communicate with their bodies through gestures, posture, or head movement.
- Consider that the same gestures can mean different things. For example, shrugging of shoulders may either mean “I don’t know” or “I don’t care.”
- A fun practical activity is to watch a movie, the news or any documentary program while the TV is on mute and try to figure out what is being said, the context of the conversation.
2. Listen to tone of voice. Tone of voice is extremely important. We humans are visual communicators and more than 80% of a message is conveyed non-verbally. A person’s tone of voice conveys the emotion behind the words.
- Test out your tone of voice by repeating a sentence, imagining you are feeling something different each time. How does “I love you!” sound when you are pretending to be happy, shocked, angry, or sad?
3. Watch facial expressions. People have very expressive faces. Even when we try our best to conceal our emotions, they are often present on our faces anyway.
- Look in a mirror and act out how you think you look when you are bored, happy, annoyed, or excited.
Method 3 – Being a part of your community
- Search for volunteer opportunities. Connect in your community. Take your empathy skills to the next level by understanding what other people experience as a group or culture, for example. This will help you be socially aware at a community, or perhaps even global, level. Find a soup kitchen where you can help out, help immigrants learn your language or better yet you learn their language, become active in your church and so forth.
2. Travel to a new part of town. You may be surprised at the variety of people who live near you.
- Visit a local museum devoted to an ethnic group or culture.
- Take an open-air bus tour
- Spend a day in an ethnic neighbourhood in your community (or perhaps nearby larger city). Walk around the neighbourhood and try a new food for lunch.
- Attend a religious service of a faith different from yours
The development of social consciousness is vitally important. We trust that you found the information in our blogs focusing on this helpful. Please also have a look at our next blogs dealing with compassion.