EntranceHow to understand yourself and your feelings? Effective ways to understand yourself and your feelings. Understand yourself and admit it yourself.
There is scientific evidence that people who are self-aware are more successful and happier than others. They make smarter decisions, more often achieve high results in school and at work, and are more active Creative skills, build better relationships with others, and raise children more correctly.
With all this, the lack of self-awareness often leads to completely catastrophic consequences. Here are just a few of them: an unloved job, an unsuccessful marriage, a ruined career, lack of close friends, loss of meaning in life.
Fortunately, each of us can learn to become deeply aware of ourselves. The author of the book “Insight”, psychologist Tasha Eurich recommends answering a number of questions first.
What are your values?
Think about what is truly important to you in life, what principles you would never give up. Your values determine the kind of person you want to be. They are the ones you should be guided by in all your actions. This guide will always help you make the right decision, make difficult choices, stay on the right path and save inner harmony.
Check your inner compass more often -
The following questions will help you understand your values:
1. What values were instilled in you as a child? Do you accept them today, or do they (some of them) contradict your current beliefs?
2. What experiences and events from childhood and adolescence do you consider the most important? How did they influence your worldview?
3. Are there people you look up to in your professional and personal life? Why do you think they deserve respect?
4. Who do you have no respect for? Why?
5. Which of your bosses would you call the best leader in your life, and who the worst? Justify your answer.
6. What qualities would you like to see in your children most and what qualities least?
To achieve more high level self-awareness, make a list value guidelines(in a notebook or on a separate piece of paper that can be hung on the refrigerator) and periodically check to what extent your actions reflect these principles. For example, Benjamin Franklin assessed his actions daily using this list of virtues:
Temperance, silence, love of order, determination, frugality, hard work, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, calmness, chastity, modesty.
What are your hobbies?
Do what you love -
Here are some more questions to help you analyze your passions:
1. What is your ideal day? What would make you jump out of bed in the morning?
2. What do you never get tired of doing?
3. What activities make you feel bad?
4. If you retired tomorrow, would you miss your job?
5. What activities do you enjoy most? What exactly attracts you to them?
If you have many hobbies, write down all the things you enjoy doing on separate cards. Rearrange them, reflect and look for patterns until you feel that you have found your way. Think about how to turn your hobbies into a profession.
What are you aiming for?
Steve Jobs once said, “I want to leave a mark on the universe.” What do you dream about?
Remember: the process is much more important than the result. Achieving something on your list of goals may leave you disappointed, but having broad aspirations will energize you every day. Identify them by answering the questions below:
1. What did you dream of becoming as a child? What attracted you to this activity?
2. Do you find satisfaction in what you are doing now? Does this make sense? Do you have a feeling that you are missing something?
3. Re-read the lists of your values and hobbies, but imagine that they were compiled by a stranger. What do you think he would like to experience or do during his life?
4. If you were told that you would be dead in a year, what would you do for the next 12 months?
5. What would you like to leave behind?
What is your ideal environment?
Imagine an introvert who has to come into contact with a huge number of people every day. Or a sociable person forced to work on projects alone for a long time. A homebody traveling on numerous business trips. And someone who cannot live without traveling, but is trying to come to terms with the drab office routine. Creative personality, whose ideas are constantly rejected by the boss. And a good performer, from whom creativity is required.
All these people cannot realize their full potential simply because they find themselves in an unfavorable environment.
Finding something you love is not everything, because any business can turn into a nightmare if you work in the wrong conditions. The environment should not hinder you, but help you. Therefore, it is necessary to create an atmosphere in which you will feel as productive and happy as possible.
By finding suitable conditions for ourselves, we achieve more with less effort -
If you understand what your ideal environment is, it will be easier for you to make important decisions: what city to live in, where to look for work, what offers to immediately refuse, what kind of people to surround yourself with. Answer the following questions to understand which terms are right for you:
1. Under what conditions have you been able to work most effectively in the past?
2. What approach to learning or what environment helped (help) you learn the material better?
3. Have you ever had to quit because of unsuitable working conditions? What exactly didn't suit you?
4. What is your ideal work environment?
5. What relationships and social situations give you pleasure?
Whatever we are talking about (home, work, study), the main criterion when assessing conditions is your energy level. If you feel energetic and happy, everything is fine. If at the end of the day you feel weak and hold on with all your strength, it’s time to think about a change of scenery.
What are your reactions?
Try to identify your patterns - the thoughts, feelings and actions that are characteristic of you in different situations. The way you are used to reacting to the world, can tell a lot about your personality. But more importantly, you are able to identify your negative behavior patterns and correct them.
If you yell at your co-workers every day, then you have developed a pattern of irritability. If you constantly abandon difficult projects halfway through, you probably tend to give in to difficulties. If you are never happy with the results of your work, perhaps your perfectionistic habit of criticizing yourself is ruining your life. By discovering such problems, you will understand what you need to work on to improve.
Self-awareness is a prerequisite for self-improvement, -
By tracking your reactions, you can find not only shortcomings, but also advantages that you didn’t even suspect about before. For example, it suddenly turns out that in extreme conditions you exhibit remarkable leadership skills. Of course, know your strengths also very useful.
As you already understand, here you need not so much to think as just observe yourself. But first, answer the following questions, they will push you in the right direction.
We are looking for advantages:
1. What has always come to you without much effort or prior preparation?
2. What do you think you do faster and better than others?
3. What kind of work energizes you and makes you more productive?
4. What work makes you proud?
5. Which of your achievements was the most unexpected for you?
We are looking for shortcomings:
1. Remember the biggest failures in your life. What do they have in common?
2. What disappointed you most about yourself?
3. What kind of criticism do you usually hear about yourself from others?
4. What activities do you fear most?
5. What character traits do your friends often joke about?
How does your behavior affect other people?
Everything we've talked about so far requires focusing on yourself. However, it is equally important to understand how other people perceive us. We often alienate friends, relatives, and acquaintances with our behavior without even realizing it.
To build deep and lasting relationships with people, learn to look at situations from someone else's point of view -
The next time you want to sternly reprimand a colleague for an error in a report, loudly resent the work of a hotel administrator, complain to a waiter, or reproach your partner for indifference, stop and try to imagine what they are feeling and thinking. Is the guilt of these people so great as to punish them with an angry tirade? What emotions will they experience if you can't control yourself? How would an outside observer see this situation?
This switching of the focus of vision will help you avoid many mistakes and change your behavior in better side. As a first step, answer a few questions:
1. Which people in your personal and professional life are most important to you (co-workers, managers, clients, friends, children, spouses, etc.).
2. How do you want to appear to these people?
3. Remember how you interacted with all these people last week. Did your behavior always affect them the way you wanted?
4. What exactly was the reaction of your friends? Try to remember phrases, intonation, facial expressions, gestures. Is this what you expected? If not, how could you adjust your actions to improve mutual understanding?
5. What behavioral habits can you start working on tomorrow to influence others in the way you want?
There are two types of self-awareness: internal and external. The first is related to understanding yourself, your values, aspirations, suitable conditions and reactions. If you start making choices that are aligned with your true self, you will feel much happier—both at work and in your personal life.
The second type of self-awareness implies that you see yourself from the outside, that is, you understand how others perceive you. With this skill, you will be able to build stronger and stronger healthy relationships with other people.
There is no dependence between internal and external self-awareness; in part they are even in contradiction. Surely you know self-obsessed people who do not know how to receive feedback and don't understand what their behavior actually looks like. Others, on the contrary, concentrate too much on what others will think and completely forget about their own interests. The truth, as always, is in the middle. Harmony is only possible when you develop both types of self-awareness.
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So, the time has come to write an article for that category of people who cannot understand their desires, understand their aspirations, and answer the question: “What exactly do I need?”. This category of people often wonders: “How to understand yourself?” . For those who like self-examination, I ask you to pour yourself some tea and sit down comfortably.
Why is this happening to us? Why do there come moments in life when many things seem incomprehensible to us? It seems like just yesterday a person knew what he wanted, what to achieve, who to be with and how to live. But this day came, and everything became incomprehensible and unclear. The man suddenly began to not understand his desires, his aspirations disappeared somewhere, future life was erased, and being with loved ones became unbearable. And at this moment a person asks the question: “How to understand yourself?”. By asking this question, a person believes that he himself is to blame for all this confusion.
Let's look at real examples when a person cannot understand himself. At first, a boy named Petya liked one girl. He felt something for her, so he came over and met her. Later they began dating and six months later Petya realizes that this girl is no longer as interesting to him as before. Everything has become ordinary, and he realizes that that former light has gone out.
After some time, another girl appears in his circle, whom he seems to like. Why, it seems? Because he himself doesn’t understand whether he likes her or not. After all, he already has a girlfriend, and then he liked another one. And this situation forces Petya to doubt his feelings. Either it seems to him that he still loves his girlfriend, then it seems to him that now he likes another girl. And Petya tries to sort out his feelings. Petya is trying to understand what exactly he needs. It's just that he's confused. In such situations, the question often arises: How to understand yourself? Or more precisely, how to understand your feelings?
Second example. Let's take the same Petya. Peter for a long time tried to achieve his goal - to become a karate champion. He trained for a long time, often competed and one day he became a karate champion. And the moment he became one, he suddenly realized that this victory did not make him happy. His father is much more happy. Later Petya realizes that this sport is not interesting to him. He is attracted to other activities, but not to this one. Perhaps Petya became a karate champion because his father wanted it? After all, having achieved a goal, he does not feel that this was his goal. And Petya, after the victory, sits and thinks how he can understand himself, what he wants.
And many people in our world do not achieve their goals first. And the realization of this comes when a person has already achieved the desired result. When a person achieves his goals, he rejoices, and when others achieve them, he feels empty. After this, the person thinks and tries to understand himself for a long time.
And the third example is when it comes. And it comes in the interval of 30-35 years. A person, waking up in the morning, suddenly begins to realize that this is not the life he dreamed of. On the left lies a grumpy and curvaceous wife, the children do not obey, the apartment is still rented, I have never been anywhere else except Russia. A person falls into a deep depression and tries to understand himself, to understand what he did wrong, why he came to such results. After all, in my youth, life seemed completely different, it was full of hopes for a better future, but in reality it turned out to be not a fairy tale at all. To be honest, such thoughts arise in any life.
Not knowing what you want, unfulfilled expectations, achieving goals that are not yours, lack of goals - these are the main reasons why a person wants to understand himself.
How to understand yourself?
Many people are simply prone to self-flagellation and self-examination. Do you want to understand yourself? Then pull out this weed by the roots. Self-digging is always bad. A person does not accept himself as he is. He constantly compares himself with someone, always analyzes his behavior, scolds himself for. With such a habit you can go crazy. To understand yourself, you need to allow yourself to be who you are. Accept yourself, your qualities and shortcomings. No one in this world is perfect, and you don't have to be perfect either. Why destroy yourself from the inside? If you accept yourself, others will accept you too. This is the pattern.
A person wonders how to understand himself when he loses himself and... If there are no goals, then it disappears. And the answer is obvious - to find YOUR goal. Many people do not know how to distinguish their goals from others, their desires from those imposed. It's simple. Other people's goals and desires do not motivate a person, self-sabotage occurs, and these goals go out as quickly as a match. A person forgets about them. Your goals and desires burn like stars. A person cannot calm down until he achieves them. As long as such things appear in the mind, a person sees the meaning of his existence. He knows what he is striving for.
I am sure that you also have such goals, it’s just that someone made you forget about them. Right now, write down what you want to achieve in life. Write as specifically as possible. Then look through the list and cross out those items that do not seem to be your thing. Pay attention to your inner feelings, listen to your heart and intuition. Having figured out your goals, you will gain the meaning of life, and the question - “How to understand yourself?” , will no longer bother you.
If you are currently not satisfied with your life, you should think about what led to such results. Many people, instead of taking action, sit on the fence and whine about how bad they live in this world. For example, a person is underpaid at work. Of course this doesn't suit him. He whines while sitting on the fence. But in order to solve any situation, you need to act.
In this situation, actions can be very different. For example: start working better so that your boss will appreciate you, approach your boss and ask for a promotion, get a different job, . That is, it turns out that in order to understand yourself and the situation, you must first find the reason for this situation, then find ways to get out of this situation, then act.
And the last answer to the question of how to understand yourself - just survive this period. Everything ends someday. During a midlife crisis, you might just whine and whine. Then it will become easier for you. Your goals, plans and aspirations will find you themselves. The clouds will clear and you will see all your desires. Just wait.
To understand yourself, you must, of course, start with yourself. Then you need to find the reasons for this situation, ways out, and you’re done. Let me remind you not to engage in soul-searching. Eliminate this matter from your life forever. Of course, sometimes you need to work on yourself, but doing it all the time is completely wrong.
The first step to solving the question of how to understand yourself begins with the question - "What do I want?". Start answering this question right now and after a while you will receive the correct answer. Good luck to you. Everything in your life will be wonderful!
how to understand yourself
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Good afternoon, dear readers! How well do you know yourself? If you were asked to describe yourself as if from the outside, what would you say? Many people sooner or later begin a period of soul-searching and self-knowledge. But it’s not always clear where to start and how to do everything correctly, so as not to drown in a sea of psychological information and make things worse for yourself. After all, not everything is as easy as it seems at first glance. Today I offer you a simple but convenient plan on how to understand yourself, personality psychology and self-analysis.
Psychological tests
Usually a person begins to know himself through psychological tests. This is, of course, not a bad thing, but learning to correctly interpret test results is not so easy. Psychologists have been teaching this for several years, preparing for certain results, teaching them to look not only at numbers and indicators, but also at the person himself, at the situation, at the circumstances.
Remember that many tests are based simply on general provisions and do not take into account your characteristics. It is impossible to understand yourself or other people only by passing such tests. If you really want to get an in-depth analysis, then I advise you to contact a psychologist who will draw up a psychological portrait for you.
A person is constantly changing, becoming better, reconsidering his views on life, learning new things. I have not yet met a single person who would remain exactly the same throughout his life. Personality tends to develop. Keep this in mind when doing soul-searching.
I bring to your attention the article “”. In it you will find many practical and useful tips, which will help you figure out where to start, how best to proceed and where to go. Don't be afraid and don't rush into everything at once. Be gradual and thorough, then you will definitely succeed.
"I" in relationships
When a person learns to recognize his essence, then, one way or another, he pays attention to himself in relationships. And, in general, there is a reassessment of the relationships of the past, present and future. This is an important and large part of life, so understanding yourself from a relationship perspective is extremely important.
It doesn't matter whether you are currently in a relationship or not. You still need to analyze this part of your life. Choose a time when no one will distract you, when you can sit quietly and calmly alone with your thoughts.
Sometimes a woman gets so carried away in a relationship that she stops being herself. She completely dissolves in a man. Sound familiar? I have several clients who, after a separation or divorce, were completely lost in life, because there was nothing in life except their husband. Nothing of our own. This is a catastrophically wrong situation.
Therefore, in a relationship, it is important to understand your desires and dreams, think about your activities, and spend time apart. You should not dissolve in a person, no matter how tempting it may seem. It’s easy to lose yourself next to another person, but then it’s hard to find yourself.
And many men should take a closer look at themselves in relationships. Why does the choice constantly lean towards such girls who cause wild pain? After all, happy person, who has caught harmony, and the relationship is going well. Think about it.
In the article “” you can find interesting thoughts that will tell you what is going wrong and how to fix it. Remember, there are no hopeless situations.
Work - career
But besides relationships, there is another important issue that should be thoroughly understood. This is a profession and your job. One of my clients worked as a secretary from her youth. The work wasn't particularly dusty, but she constantly felt dissatisfied and irritated.
After long conversations, it turned out that she did not tolerate office work at all. Of course, she didn’t rush headlong to quit. After all, you have to earn money to live.
The girl approached the question responsibly. She began to understand the question of what she could do outside the office and still earn enough money. Now she works as a florist, has opened a network of her own flower shops and organizes master classes for beginners.
You can find your calling even in deep middle age. You can verify this by reading the article “”. In it I talk in detail about all sorts of ups and downs associated with my career.
Try to understand whether you like what you do, what processes at work you enjoy, and what annoys you and makes you angry. Don’t immediately think that your current job is nonsense and you need to change everything in your life.
Be consistent and calm. It is especially important not to make hasty decisions based on emotions. It’s not for nothing that they say that the morning is wiser than the evening.
Interests
Besides work, I also have hobbies. It is impossible to know yourself without this side of life. It doesn’t happen that a person just goes to work and then watches TV at home. There are always books, going to the cinema with friends, bowling or trips out of town.
For self-development, it is very important to do some things outside of work and home. You can know yourself not only by sitting in a chair and thinking. By doing something new, you recognize your desires, understand what you want and where you are striving.
One of my friends seems to have tried a million activities in her life. And vocals, piano playing, photography, styling and makeup, camping and rock climbing, charity and helping orphans. What was missing in her life.
She quit some classes quite quickly, without even studying for a week. Others became a real hobby and, to some extent, remain to this day. Don't be afraid to look for yourself and discover your passions. The more new things you experience, the better you will know your essence.
In all this it is important to maintain harmony. Of course, a person cannot break away and be everywhere. Sometimes it's not so easy to combine work, hobbies, family and friends. Sometimes you have to sacrifice something, make concessions. Here, too, a field for reflection opens up for you. What and for what are you willing to sacrifice?
I bring to your attention the article “”. From it you will learn how to properly distribute your time, pay the right amount of attention to all aspects of your life and find inner harmony.
You can know yourself with the help of other people. How? Ask your loved ones, acquaintances and friends to write you a certain description. Positive and negative qualities. Just make sure that you don't resent people for telling you the truth.
Take information as new knowledge that will help you become even better and change your life.
Pay attention to your dreams. Sometimes very important and necessary discoveries come to us at night. Learn to remember what you dreamed. There are a huge number of techniques for this that you can find on the Internet.
Pay close attention to yourself when you are angry and upset. In such states, the most naked truth usually comes out. From the depths of my soul. Therefore, pay attention to those things that make you angry and irritated. Learn to understand your real attitude to what is happening.
Read Barbara Sher's book What to dream about" She can push you to new achievements that for some reason you were afraid to do before.
Have you ever helped a person understand himself? Do you often have heart-to-heart conversations with loved ones? Are there things you would be scared to know about yourself?
Feel free to move forward and don’t be afraid of anything, you will succeed!
The article talks about how to understand yourself and achieve your desired goals.
There are moments in every person’s life when he seems to stand at a fork in the road and doesn’t know which way to go. Sometimes these moments of crisis are directly caused by a difficult situation, dissatisfaction with work, or personal life. Sometimes they have no obvious cause and appear as if out of thin air. One way or another, it interferes with your life and brings anxiety. How to understand yourself and your thoughts: advice from a psychologist.
In order to understand oneself, a person needs specifics. Just sit down and analyze. Better with a piece of paper and a pen. Ask yourself specific questions and try to give specific answers. Try to formulate in clear words the problem that worries you. If you succeed, you are halfway to success.
Having realized that you are not happy with the current state of affairs, make a plan to get out of this crisis. Learn to better organize the events of your life, plan your steps and time. You don’t want to get bogged down in endless “musts” without moving, do you? Realize the uniqueness of every moment in life, learn to make the most of it. Live here and now. How to understand yourself and your thoughts: advice from a psychologist will answer this question.
- For starters, you can rejoice. If you are prone to self-examination, it means that you think, you exist! A huge number of “human units” live like zombies or robots, mechanically doing the same things day after day, and do not even ask such questions.
- You understand that if you don’t go anywhere, you won’t come anywhere. Therefore, separate the wheat from the chaff, the significant from the unimportant, and act. If you are not satisfied with your salary, ask for an increase; if you want a promotion, attend courses to improve your skills, get additional education. If it doesn’t work out, change your job.
- Family problems? Talk, find out, explain. Tell directly what your partner doesn’t like or offends you about, this will raise your self-esteem and reduce the reason for dissatisfaction with yourself. After all, often the reason for our tossing is precisely the confidence that something is wrong with us, ripened claims against ourselves.
- If you realize that life circumstances are such that they cannot be moved from a dead point yet, learn to accept this and be patient. Calm down. Remember the age-old wisdom about the necessity: to change what you can change, to accept what you cannot change, and the ability to distinguish one from the other.
- Take a philosophical look at your life. Realize that life is cyclical, and after a black stripe a white one will certainly come. Think about life, about the people you know who you want to emulate. Remember that they also had difficult moments, but they coped with it and are now satisfied with life, happy, successful.
- Sometimes your problems are partly imaginary. You just need to distract yourself a little by going to a theater performance, or meeting old friends over a cup of coffee in a pleasant place, and finally getting a good night's sleep. Perhaps in a couple of days you will look at your life from a different angle, without the former tragedy.
- Are turmoil in your soul and depressive notes returning to you? Do not hesitate to visit a psychologist, although it is not very common for our mentality to share problems with a stranger. You need to understand that this is a doctor, a person who has studied for many years to help people solve their problems. personal problems. With his advice, a psychologist will help you understand yourself and your thoughts. And – the joy of life and peace of mind will definitely return.
The desire to understand yourself, your feelings, and other people usually arises during a period of some life difficulties. The need to make an important decision, decide on plans or evaluate your feelings, attitude towards to a certain person. Although the desire to know how to understand your feelings and thoughts may arise not only in these situations, because each person is individual. That's why this question is complicated enough to have a specific answer. But we will try to give examples of ways that will help you understand how to understand people and, above all, yourself.
Understanding ourselves and others
We will divide our conversation into two parts, but only theoretically. This will be a conversation about how to understand yourself and your feelings and how to understand another person and his feelings. Remember that this is only a division in the text, since learning to understand people is impossible without understanding yourself. Let's start with this.
How to understand yourself: methods
Get ready for the fact that this is not easy, and working on yourself is a constant, continuous process. It is consistency that will allow you to understand yourself, your feelings and thoughts, without resorting to this painful question anymore.
“Remember yourself” - this is what our first technique will be called. What does it mean? Have you ever noticed that in the bustle of everyday life, our “I” gets lost somewhere... Stop, breathe out, don’t rush anywhere... Remember yourself, think about yourself. Go to work, school or home, anywhere, disconnect from all thoughts (you need to cook dinner, do laundry, study...). Think about yourself, how do you feel now? What feelings do you experience (physical and spiritual)? Look at the trees, the sky, the people around you, but think about yourself. Imagine yourself, how you walk, how you look from the outside, how do you feel looking at yourself from the outside? Constantly ask yourself these questions and answer them. The more often you can remember yourself, the better you will begin to understand yourself.
Next you will need time. You need to write two essays. You can even set aside two days for this (one for each). Just don’t be alarmed, this is not a test of your literacy and spelling, on the contrary, they are absolutely not needed here, we want to understand how to understand our feelings, and not school knowledge.
- The first essay is “what’s boiling.” Sit down and write absolutely EVERYTHING that bothers you, infuriates you, annoys you, doesn’t like you, doesn’t suit you. Touch on all areas of life: home, family, financial situation, work, partner, children, etc. Everything that doesn’t suit you regarding one or another aspect of life. Don’t think, don’t touch your thoughts, we are writing feelings, these are the ones that need to be understood.
- The second essay is “what I want.” Again, write everything that comes to mind, everything you want, how good it would be for you. Think, think, write.
- Next, you need to analyze these essays daily. Sit down in the evening and read one thing, then another.
- Try this technique: “I will be in 10 years (20, 30).” What kind of person do you imagine yourself to be? Here it is important not to fantasize, but to imagine how you really see yourself, based on a given time. What have you achieved? What do you have? What suits you about this and what doesn’t? Can this be fixed today? And How?
- In every unusual situation, watch yourself. It is especially useful to do this in situations of conflict, discomfort, or a new environment. For example, the driver of a minibus full of people was rude to you because you slammed the door. Everyone is looking at you. How do you like it now? How do you feel? Why do you think? Or another example: You are on vacation abroad for the first time. What feelings do you experience (not thoughts, feelings!)? In general, always analyze yourself.
- Understanding yourself is a mandatory dialogue with yourself. Self-analysis, self-observation. This is what will help you understand other people, because you will develop the skill of considering the situation, yourself, and problems from the outside. The ability to take the position of another is the path to learning to understand people.
Learn to understand others
In general, we have already touched on this issue. To understand other people, you need to learn to understand yourself. This is necessary to be able to take the side of another person. But not just imagine, but get used to another person, completely immerse yourself in him, try to understand what it’s like for him, what he feels, what he thinks, what would it be like for you in his place? By the way, always remember that all people are individual. You can try to understand the feelings of another, but you will never experience them. Don’t copy your feelings onto another, don’t think that if you don’t care in some situation, then the other one won’t care either.
As often as possible, try to imagine yourself in the other person’s place. You can even do this while walking down the street. See how someone else was doused by a car. Try to imagine what the person is experiencing? How does he feel? How would you feel? What would others think of you if you were in this situation?
Observe other people in different situations. Always watch. Look at facial expressions, pay attention to voice, movements. This is especially important when you yourself are participating in the conversation. Look the person in the eyes, watch him. Just don’t turn it into a cult, keep the unspoken rules, don’t stare at a person while sitting on a bus. Do it unobtrusively, unnoticed.
Always think before you say something to someone. Imagine being told the same thing. Think about what thoughts and feelings your words might evoke.
Do you want to understand how to understand other people? Ask questions. Only not for yourself, but for a person. Does the person seem offended? Ask directly. “Are you upset about something?”, “What are you thinking about?”, “How would you react if I...”, “What makes you angry?”, “Why are you silent?” etc. Try to avoid questions with “why”; they are often perceived as provocative and trigger a defensive reaction in people.