Contrary to popular believes, empathy is not the ability to feel what the other person is feeling. If so, we would be suffering from emotional ups and downs throughout the day.
Empathy is to understand what another individual feels and respond accordingly.
Science says that the origin of empathy are mirror neurons, which activate in response to the acts and emotions of others. Its an attempt of the brain to experience what the other person is experiencing.
For example, you yawn when the other yawns. Yawning is empathy at its best!!
To be able to understand someone, try to think and study what motivates yourself to do what you do and act the way you do. Think of all the difficulties that you have to pass through day by day, and most importantly you are not the only one with difficulties.
To help the other person open up easily, just ask one simple question: “How are you?”, and wait for their answer. Pay attention to them, ALL of your attention. Even by touching their arm or holding them can help them feel more secure with you, and let them see you more trustworthy. Also and very important, don’t tell them what to do or think about exposing your conclusion of what they just said. Let them tell you how they really feel and their emotions not about acts.
Go out several times a day of your shoes to put yourself in the shoes of others. Strive for a while to do all this and soon you will surprise yourself by doing it almost unconsciously. You will have succeeded in improving your empathy.
To become more empathic as a whole you have to learn to be able to put yourself in the place of the other person, stop thinking about you for a moment and try to understand the motivation and the fears of the person you are speaking with, without thinking of what your answer is going to be. It comes close to meditating.
Stop listening for 5 minutes at the person who is speaking with you and try to focus on other things. For example at the way they speak, the tone, the posture, their expressions, so silence your reason and give your intuition a chance.