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Show Look at life from different point of view Life would be so much easier if we lived by the rules: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and when interacting or communicating com-municating with someone, take a minute to imagine you're that person. per-son. If everyone in the world lived by these concepts, there would be no more wars, rapes, robberies, muggings, mugg-ings, child abuse or verbal injuries. Much of the world's violence would be eliminated and most people peo-ple would gain more compassion for their fellowman by abiding by these simple concepts. I f i KRIS JOHNSON Staff Writer i Think about it, would Saddam j Hussein like it if the king of Kuwait i attacked Iraq and tried to overrule his country? I bet he'd be one hot Arab, if you know what I mean. Many people are incapable of truly tru-ly seeing life through their counterpart's counter-part's eyes. There's an old Indian saying that talks about walking in another man's moccasins. By doing this, the Indian is supposed to gain knowledge and wisdom about that person. I try to apply this Indian concept to my daily life. It's not always easy though. Sometimes we get so angry and mad at a person, that it seems im--possible to muster up enough eneTgy to imagine seeing life from their perspective. I guarantee that if you do this, you will gain a profound insight of the other person. You will have a clearer understanding of who they are and why they act the way that they do. I did this at work one day. One of the girls who answers the phone rang my desk to see if I could take a call. I told her to screen all of my calls because I was really busy and didn't have the time to talk to everyone. She replied in an aggravated ag-gravated voice tone, "Well I'm not going to take the time to screen your calls because I'm busy tool " I continued on with my work; however, I couldn't help but wonder why she was so upset with me. So I imagined that I was her, and replayed the earlier conversation. conversa-tion. It suddenly occurred to mc that she was busy too, and furthermore, what makes me so important to have all of my calls screened. Immediately Im-mediately thereafter, I marched down stairs and gave her a big apology. I really felt bad. I'm no martyr either. If anything, I'm fortunate to have developed the ability to truly understand where a person is coming from. Once in a blue moon I'll run into a someone who is rude to me for no reason at all. Again, I imagine that I am that person and I try to pinpoint what the actual cause of his hostilities are. Many times people will unconsciously un-consciously act like they're mad at you, when really they're mad about something that has nothing to do with you. How many times have you had a bad day at the office or at home, and you take out your anger and frustrations on your wife or husband? These scenarios happen all the time, and most people aren't even aware that they're taking their personal animosities out on someone some-one else. Whenever someone is rude to me for no apparent reason, I ignore the person by setting up an imaginary plexiglass shield around me for protection, pro-tection, and I pretend that all of the words flowing out of their mouth hit the shield and fall to the ground. Hence, their words have no effect on me, I don't hold in any anger, and the person usually ends up apologizing to me. I know this sounds silly, but believe it or not, the pretend plexiglass shield really does work. I learned this magical technique a couple of years ago in a communications seminar. If someone treats me unjustly and I don't think I deserve to be treated in such a manner, I'll say to them, "Hey, step into my shoes for a minute and imagine that you're me. How do you think it makes me feel right now, when you talk to me like that?" I honestly think that many of our communication problems would be resolved a lot quicker if everyone had the ability to walk in the other person's shoes, and see the situation from their perspective, instead of always being so wrapped up in our own feelings. |
