Simplifying Relationships: Dealing with People
The people with whom we spend time daily, we wish to know how they really are! We repeatedly feel that “if I had known how this person truly is, then even before having an experience, I would have come to know the truth, that things are not the way I thought they were. This person turned out to be something that I never expected him to be like.” How good it would have been if we could get to know how people really are!
Many skills are required to understand how people really are. Some skills require experience, and some require meeting many people, but there is one simple skill that requires neither. Once that skill is learned, we realize that the requirement to understand people starts with this skill.
Many times, we might have said, “I never thought that you would treat me like this,” or “why do you always talk to me loudly? Have you ever seen me talking to you loudly? Why can’t you lower your voice while talking to me?” Our belief system, with which this skill is related, is such that everyone around us is like us in some way. We directly or indirectly believe that everyone is a photocopy of ourselves. Everyone who knows me, with whom I have had any kind of relationship, be it brother or sister, customer or vendor, mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, we go on assuming that this man, this boy or girl, she is my photocopy and this is where we get fooled.
If we understand that there is not even a single person in this world who is exactly like me, then our second perspective starts. Once we come to the “hey, if she is not like me, then let us find out how she is” mode, we come out of the “I know how it is and it turned out to be not the way I knew it!” mode, the mode which could have wounded us. I am talking about the wound that occurs after expectation or heartbreak. That wound could be, “I didn’t expect this person to turn out like this”. But if we keep on thinking that “this person is not like me at all and I have to study him; let’s find out how he is!”, then we come in the mode of exploration and not in the mode of prediction. Exploration mode allows us to explore ‘anything could happen’. The result of this will be that you will be in the ‘anything can happen’ – mode only’! So whatever happens, it will not hurt you for sure. Do try this! You can try this right from this moment because we are always surrounded by people 24/7.