Being sensitive towards others' opinions, understanding and thoughts is the key to show them love and care. Empathy comes from within, it's an inner feeling which tells us to be helpful and sensitive towards others. We can't force anyone not even us to be empathetic. It's a natural feeling to behave in a more compassionate manner.
Then, how we can promote empathy?
I believe feeling empathy can't be forced- We can learn it from our family, from our surroundings, from social culture. But if there's a lacking of them and if we fill that we need to fill up that; we certainly can learn & practice to feel empathy. There are no such strict rules which can give us a quick insight into learning empathy. Rather it's a wholesome perspective.
Observe and listen to others. Ignorance is so common that we often can't focus on other's feelings, sorrow, and thought. We should be more cared about what others think, what their opinion is, why they feel so and everything. It helps us to be more compassionate towards others.
Imagine what others are feeling- It's hard to see ourselves in the position of a person totally opposite to us. But if we can do that we can understand what's their point is, why they think like that, how they feel, ie. It really helps.
Show- Not only feeling others, but it's also very necessary to show compassion and empathy to others' feelings. It can make other persons feel better as well as us also.
Seeing today's generation, it sometimes feels like we are far away from this feeling. We are becoming violent, negatively sensitive towards one another. We try to force others to act in a certain manner. We forget to tolerate other's opinions.
You will get to see this common scenario around the world, no matter what the topic is like politics, religion, lifestyle, and anything. There's no room to show compassion anymore. It's a wired situation. Yeah, there are many exceptions and those exceptions are hope actually.