How did you manage to do this without garnering a reputation as that weird person who always starts conversations with random strangers, who you shouldn't bother responding to because the only reason he's talking to you is because you happened to be there when he was?

Whether you feel pain or not is a fact. It's territory, not map.

And is the pain of envy and covetousness also a fact?

I would call it an attitude, not a fact.

How did the subject come up? I have never ever heard this subject discussed outside of two contexts:

The question under discussion is "What can't we say?"; or

One of the interlocutors feels it's important to take civil rights away from people.

Well, since this is the first reference in this thread to "What can't we say?", which of the commenters would you say "feels it's important to take civil rights away from people"?

But seriously, you should get out of the habit of assuming sinister motives of people who disagree with you.

Yes, quite right - in which case it is a power-play, pure and simple.

I just wanted to present an alternative to show that it's not always so cut and dried.

Given as everyone seems to want to pile unjustified extra assumptions onto the scenario, here are several actual scenarios that I know have occured that took this form:

1. Alice is angry/upset because of something Bob did. Bob is unaware of what he did, but has picked up on Alice's anger and wants to help her. a. Alice is trying to convince herself that it doesn't matter. -----b. Alice thinks Bob knowing what caused her anger will cause further problems.

2. Alice wasn't actually angry/upset at all. Bob believed she was, but was incorrect. His repeated questioning has resulted in her getting angry; making him more confident that there is a problem.

3. Alice is emotionally abusing Bob, manipulating him so that he will grovel for an explanation, such that when she tells him what she wants him to do, he'll be forced to do it.

4. Alice is angry at Bob for something he did. Bob is aware what this is, but wants to pretend he isn't in order to be able to make Alice feel as though she's over-reacting

5. Alice is angry/upset for reasons that have nothing to do with Bob. Bob is concerned for Alice's wellbeing, but Alice doesn't want to share.

6. Alice is angry. Bob knows this, but Alice is actually, honestly, unaware of this fact.

Usually, men in this situation repeatedly ask Alice what they did wrong, and Alice will adamantly refuse to say. Whatever they're doing wrong, it's not failing to take time and effort. How many times do you see something like this:

"What, what's wrong, Alice?"

Nothing.

"It ... doesn't sound like that. Really, what's wrong."

NOTHING. EVERYTHING'S FINE.

"Please, Alice. I want to know what I did. Just tell me."

...

Copying my example from another reply:

Let me build on this hypothetical example to explain why she does that:

Bob has clearly done something wrong. Alice is currently in a highly emotional state and recognises that she is likely not able to talk reasonably about what has happened without either becoming very angry or extremely upset and crying.

Therefore she really doesn't want to talk about it right now.

Bobs insistence on demanding all the answers right now is not helping her highly emotional state and is, in fact, just adding to her feelings of anger and panic... given that clearly he did something wrong, she believes he has no right to currently dominate the timing of when she discusses this highly sensitive issue (whatever it is).

But right now, she is too emotionally fraught even to be able to say that without shouting... so she just blocks.

The best thing for Bob to do is to courteously withdraw for a little while until Alice calms down... then to return at a later date when she's clearly had some time to reflect... and ask then.

I'd really like to know some basic, repeatable exercises that build empathy and social skills. Changing your everyday behavior to incorporate little bits of training here and there is not very effective. It's like wanting to get fit and deciding to walk a little faster whenever you need to get somewhere, instead of joining the gym. Or wanting to be a musician and deciding to hum along to songs more often, instead of getting a tutor.

Amusing, but I am embarrassed that this so highly voted (which I am attributing to this being written by luke).

Clearing up some confusion that has come up: (and holy crap, thanks so much for the flood of interest since this hit the frontpage!)

What if you just want a flat yellow brick road to force yourself to do, say, a minimum of 60 minutes of studying per day?

The answer is that that's not a flat yellow brick road, that's a yellow brick road that slopes up at the rate of 60 minutes per day. In other words, you'll have a graph with total cumulative number of minutes of studying on the y-axis and time on the x-axis.

Also, if you literally want to force yourself to do a minimum of 60 minutes each day, we don't quite support that. What you can force yourself to do with Beeminder is maintain an average of X minutes per day. When you do more you end up above the road which will give you a safety buffer. You can then make the road steeper (increase X) to get rid of that safety buffer.

Note that if you only ever do the bare minimum then Beeminder will enforce that 60 minutes every day, because you'll always be skating the bottom edge and that's the amount you'll have to do each day to stay on the road.