Most of us act with care daily, yet stress makes our empathy glitchy. Scott Howard Swain’s guide teaches Street empathy: practical steps to swap “Who’s right?” for curiosity.
The story
If humans were “naturally selfish,” my inbox would be a wasteland of flaming dumpster emails. Yet, most days, people still hold doors, share credit, and ask, “Hey, are you okay?” even when they’re stressed.
That tracks with a core claim in *A Practical EmPath: Rewire Your Mind* by Scott Howard Swain: we’re wired for empathy, cooperation, and care. The problem is not that goodness is missing; it’s that our nervous systems get glitchy under load.
Scott’s “transformational guide” centers on *cognitive empathy*, the skill of understanding another person’s perspective, and he teaches it in a conversational, down-to-earth way he calls “Street empathy.” Think less “therapy voice,” more “real life, real words, real bandwidth.”
He pulls practical steps from Nonviolent Communication, Buddhism, and Stoicism to help transform anger, reduce social anxiety, and create more calm, connection, freedom, harmony, and power. Not as a vibe. As a repeatable practice.
Here’s the nerdy magic: when defensiveness spikes, Street empathy swaps the usual script, “Who’s right?” for “What’s their experience?” Curiosity becomes a patch; anger and armor start to dissolve. Your anxiety drops. Inner peace increases. You get your brain back.
Can you imagine what your day would look like if your default setting, empathy, actually got activated on purpose?
If you want a hopeful, practical way to make everyday good deeds easier, *A Practical EmPath* is a solid place to start.
