The Power of Empathy: A Thirty-Day Path to Personal Growth and Social Change

by Michael Tennant

Heal yourself to heal the The Power of Empathy is an informative and inspirational guide to building a better world through compassion, connection, and curiosity.

With this thirty-day approach, you can develop your empathy skills as tools for self-love and empowerment. Empathy expert and entrepreneur Michael Tennant weaves together scholarly research with his personal journey of loss, substance use, anxiety, and depression to explore how empathy can benefit both our inner lives and our larger community.

Filled with heartfelt personal stories, techniques for mindfulness, and engaging journaling prompts, this book grounds the abstract concept of empathy with an actionable and intersectional framework. Learn to compassionately support, courageously confront, gracefully model, effectively resolve, and masterfully connect—all through the power of empathy!

VITAL AND For everyone looking to reconnect and build bridges in response to the stressful and traumatic events of our modern times, this book provides an encouraging, conversational, and accessible introduction to the basics and benefits of empathy. Psychologists, social justice activists, and business leaders alike have found empathy to be an important tool in strengthening relationships and boosting mental health, morale, and even productivity.
 
INSPIRING EXPERT In 2018, Michael Tennant launched Actually Curious , a conversation card game that helps people create safe spaces to be vulnerable and share their views on personal issues and current events. The game went viral and sold out immediately, leading to features in the New York Times , Cosmopolitan , Harvard Business Review , Forbes , Goop, Refinery29 , and other major media. Tennant has since led talks and workshops on empathy and leadership with top companies and organizations, including NASA, Bumble, Stanford Law School, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and the Innocence Project. 
 
ACTION-DRIVEN This insightful book is a perfect gift for fans of Brené Brown, Alex Elle, Alok Vaid-Menon, Rachel Cargle, Esther Perel, and Brittany Packnett, and other speakers whose values emphasize compassion, vulnerability, and empathy. For anyone who has felt inspired by these speakers’ social justice and relationship content and is hungry for more resources, this thirty-day guidebook offers an inclusive perspective that will help transform these values into a consistent day-to-day practice.

Perfect

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 24, 2023

Reviews

[Karla Dee]

It took me longer than 30 days to read this and I didn't go day by day. I would like to reread this and be more purposeful from day 22 to 30. I feel like my emotional intelligence is at day 22 level and there is always room for improvement. Trying to remember to be more patient and humble with all the peeps.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for a primer on empathy and an opportunity for improving self-growth practices. Useful prompts and recommendations for how to move through personal struggles and deeply connect with others. I put it alongside Kristin Neff's "Self-Compassion" as a book that would make for more self-love and healthy communities if more people read it.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was very much not for me. I purchased it from an indie bookstore after the 2024 election hoping that it would give me some semblance of peace and understanding, but the "growth and social change" piece seems to lean more into the realm of "leading empathy groups." I did enjoy some of the reflections and prompts, but as a whole I found the book to be redundant and nonspecific in terms of embodying empathy. This may be more appropriate for a complete beginner who has minimal emotional intelligence.