The Atlas of the Heart

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This is a great book about making connections with others, especially in the workplace.  “The Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience” by Brene Brown.  Atlas is a book of maps.  Atlas of the Heart means knowing how to navigate around the three negative emotions or attitude that destroys our connection with others.  The author calls them the three towns:  Envy town, Pity town, and Disappointment town.  Here’s what the author says about them and how to travel through these towns with some additional comments of mine to enhance her advice.

Envy Town

In most relationships, there will come a time when you want what the other person has. Maybe your partner has an exciting new career opportunity, your coworker gets an award, or your friend wins a vast sum of money. How you respond to your envy will either move you closer to a meaningful connection or drive a wedge between the two of you.

We can’t help but compare ourselves to others, so envy is simply part of the human experience. But if you let envy run unchecked, it can turn hostile as you go from thinking “I want that too,” to “If I can’t have that, I don’t want you to have that as well…”  It’s ok to want to have good things for ourselves but if we don’t want others to have that specific thing just because we can’t have it, that’s pure envy.  My advice on envy is that each one of us is just made different by God.  Some are good in sports, others in singing, others in academics, others in art, etc.  We all have a share of talents.  If you envy someone because you are not as intelligent as that person, it simply means that is not your talent while you have a talent that person does not have.  God made us different because otherwise we would be like robots having the same abilities, and that’s boring.  The important thing is we try our best to make that God given talent grow in us because that’s what God expects of us.  Being envious of others’ talent just because you don’t have it would be like Albert Einstein envious of Michael Jordan for not being the greatest basketball player.

In the book the author recommends that we should be happy of the success of others, much like soccer players are happy that their teammate has made a goal, because we all belong to one team, the team of humanity.  Envy will hinder us from becoming friends with others and we should overcome it by doing the opposite:  wishing always their success and joy.

Pity Town

The author distinguishes pity from compassion.  Pity says “I’m sorry for your misfortune”, but stops there and would just be thankful that the misfortune did not happen to them.  It’s feeling pity for the adversity of others but keeps distance from that hapless person afterwards.  Compassion on the other hand is pity plus real concern or at least exerting the effort to try to comfort others of their pain.  The author says in order to get out of that pity town and get into the compassion road, we need to do the following: (1) Ask what their experience is like, (2) Accept their pain and suffering as they say it, and (3) Clarify what you hear and show understanding.  Another virtue to add to pity aside from compassion is empathy.  Empathy means you put yourself in other person’s shoes and try to feel their pain.

Disappointment Town

Disappointment happens when we have high expectations of others but they don’t deliver because we assume they know already what are our expectations.  We have to clearly state to others what are our expectations for them (especially if you are a supervisor handling people).  In the book, there is a story of a newlywed wife who expected her husband to decorate their house for her birthday by the time she wakes up on her birth day because that’s what her mom would do for her.  Of course, the husband does not know of her expectations.  The problem of the newly wed wife is assuming too much on the goodness of her husband.  People have to be told some times what we expect from them rather than just assume.

In the book, the author makes a habit of clearly expressing her expectations of others calling it a “painting done”.  She says, “Painting done means fully walking through my expectations of what the completed task will look like, including when it will be done, what I’ll do with the information, how it will be used, the context, the consequences of not doing it, the costs—everything we can think of to paint a shared picture of the expectations. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have.”  She recommends three points to examine ourselves if we have expressed our expectations clearly: (1) “Did I have any ‘stealth expectations’ that weren’t properly expressed?”, (2) “Could I have done a better job of expressing my expectations?”, (3) “Were my expectations not followed for reasons largely outside of anyone’s control?”

Examining, reality‐checking, and expressing your expectations will ensure you spend as little time as possible in ‘disappointment town.’