You’re Not Seeing as Clearly as You Think…
People are narrow-minded and tend to not be able to see beyond their own experiences and relative interpretations of situations. It’s a fact. Someone is always going to say:
“I’m not like that. I see things from all angles and I’m the first to understand.”
However, the people that understand seem to always want to tell you how you should feel about stuff or what you should do to resolve it.
I don’t mean that advice is a bad thing but the minute you start advising with “Just…” then you’re forcing YOUR understanding and YOUR reaction on someone else.
The thing is, we really don’t get it. Unless you are exactly alike, facing the exact same circumstances, having had the exact same previous experiences then chances are you can imagine what someone might feel or might think or might want to do but you really can’t understand.
We all need to work on listening twice as much as we speak and perhaps take some time to get our own emotions in check before we start responding to others. The goal is to support, share a burden and maybe, if appropriate, lend some insight but without minimizing a perspective.
Quite frankly, I think that before people start offering up their opinions on this, that and the next, they should ask a simple question:
“Do you need me to just listen right now or did you want my perspective on this topic?”
At least then we wouldn’t have to suffer through emotions we haven’t prepared for.
