How do you train empathy? I am at a loss.
Compassion meditation is one way. Check out the methods section of this article for a description of the meditation and the pictures to see how the brain looks during meditation and the conclusion to hear about how this type of meditation effects the areas of the brain responsible for detecting emotion in oneself and others and understanding other's mindsets.
So, transferable skills: skills that, upon improvement, increase your ability in other areas (and also improve other, higher-level skills).
A basic example would be reading/writing. Knowing how to read and write allows one to access a huge amount of other skills and resources which are otherwise unavailable. A less obvious example would be clear speech (enunciation). Ability to speak clearly improves one's prospects in a lot of different areas (e.g. professional advancement, dating, etc.).
I'm looking for additional examples. Which skills did you find to be most transferable? Did you become proficient in X, and then found this helped you in many other areas of your life? Please share.
(I tried to find whether this was discussed before, and failed; if it was, I would appreciate the link.)