My writing skills have come along way! The following is a brief paper I wrote in 2016 for an Abnormal Psychology class:
Throughout our daily lives we come across a wide variety of people. These people often times have varying perspectives on life and communicating with others that do not share out perspectives can be a challenge. There are two major techniques that can help us in our quest to us psychological principles in our daily life, they are having existential worldview and empathetic listening.
An existential world view could be described as having the belief that life has no inherent meaning. Perhaps a better way to explain it is the only meaning that life has is the meaning we give it. This view point can be ascribed to behaviors as well. All behaviors are inherently neutral, neither good or bad, and any morality they seem to have is because we have assigned it to them.
When we have an existential worldview we can acknowledge that others may have assigned life, and various behaviors, a different value than we ourselves have. We can do this without being judgmental because we have the view that there is no innate morality. As individuals we know our feelings on a certain subject or behavior do not reflect a universal or higher morality. As we interact and listen to others who have differing viewpoints and feelings we can always accept their point as true in the sense that it is truly their viewpoint or feelings.
This brings us to the second point, empathetic listening. Empathy can be defined as “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions”. So
empathetic listening would be seeking to understand another person’s experiences and
emotions by means of listening.
Combining empathetic listening with an existential world view is a powerful way in
which we can apply psychological principles in our daily lives. We can seek to
understand our fellow humans by listening intently while acknowledging that their point
of view is true, true to the individual, despite the fact that it might differ from your
personal views.
References
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/existential
Ryan David Tuttle, MA 