walk a mile in someone's shoes

Verb

walk a mile in someone's shoes (third-person singular simple present walks a mile in someone's shoes, present participle walking a mile in someone's shoes, simple past and past participle walked a mile in someone's shoes)

1. (idiomatic) To experience what someone has experienced.
   • It's likely that he didn't begrudge what he had paid Marshall though, because he thought he had finally found a medical person who had walked a mile in his shoes.1994, Colin Escott et al., Hank Williams: The Biography, Little, Brown and Company, published 1995, →ISBN, page 225
   • Michael Poulin, associate professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and colleagues showed in their 2017 study that an “imagine others” perspective leads to less stress than an “imagine self” perspective (i.e., walking a mile in someone else’s shoes).2019 June 2, Joscelyn Duffy, “The Power of Perspective Taking”, in Pyschology Today