Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we get in our own way when we are trying to build connection and care for others. This is because we all come to life and to situations with our empathy toolkit pre-loaded.

This is based on your personality or your household of origin or the first thing that someone said to you when a hard thing happened.

We all have different tools in our toolkit. The question is whether those tools are serving you and, if not, what are better tools that you can put in your toolkit?

I find that one of the best ways to introduce people to what they have in their empathy toolkit is through the lens of empathy avatars. They are some familiar types that will help you identify some of your patterns that aren’t serving you very well.

Who is Your Empathy Avatar?

Take this short quiz to learn more about your empathy avatar. Keep in mind, we all lean into different behaviors at different times, so use this as a learning tool but rest assured that there’s more to you than your avatar!

Once you see your results, we’ll point you to some tools to help you recalibrate your responses to strengthen your empathy toolkit.