‘A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally’   Oscar Wilde We are emotional beings with feelings, and together with our thoughts (which are intricately linked to our emotions and feelings) is what make us us. But our own feelings don’t exist in isolation. We are after all social beings and exist in groups, communities, nations, continents and the world. Our feelings and behaviour affect other people’s feelings and behaviour and other people’s affect us - in a positive or negative way. And the way we deal with the feelings of others can have a positive or negative impact on them or us. You only have to look at the news to recognise that as a human race we’re not always very good at dealing with the feelings of others. We see examples of religious intolerance, and social and political inequalities around the world and close to home. Our feelings do not exist in isolation and we are part of a larger community (whether we want to be or not). The more aware you become of your own feelings, the more you will find yourself able to tune in to the feelings of others. Exercising your own feeling muscle enables you to understand and empathise with others better. Empathy is a key concept here. It’s the idea of experiencing something alongside someone - putting yourself in their shoes. It differs from sympathy, which is more about feeling sorry for someone. Empathy is linked to the idea of emotional intelligence. This is the skill of managing our own emotions and being able to recognise and deal effectively with the emotions of others and handle our relationships with empathy. Empathy is a skill, and one of the indicators for happiness, we talked about previously. But how do we get it? It’s a social skill we learn and pick up as we’re growing up, but some people more so than others. ‘Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathise with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.’     Neil deGrasse Tyson You might say emotional intelligence and empathy can help us become better, more effective and successful people, and better for the communities in which we operate. Paying attention to the feeling of others is a good place to start. A question for you How often do you ask yourself in a particular situation, where you are talking with a friend, colleague, or family member: “How does anyone else feel right now?” And perhaps a more interesting question is: “How might the way they are feeling be affecting the way they are behaving?” Last week we looked at setting feeling goals and suggested ways to do it, including keeping a diary of your feelings and how you behave when having these feelings. This increased awareness of your own feelings and associated behaviours gives enables more insights into the behaviour of other people. An important distinction Notably the distinction between the person and their behaviour and the role feelings plays in the the relationship between the two. It’s helpful when dealing with people’s feelings, to separate the person - and their inner feelings - from the person’s behaviour - which is how they are acting or what they have said. As human beings we have a tendency to conflate, or combine the person and their behaviour into one. If a person is behaving angrily, on some level (whether we would say it consciously or not) they are an angry person. We associate the person with their behaviour. Now as we know from ourselves, this is not the case. You might have just had a very distressing meeting with someone which left you feeling very angry, from which you bounce straight into another conversation where