Whilst walking on the Golf Course early one morning, within limited lockdown exercising hours, I was pondering the polarized views we as people in society, business and communities can hold about a variety of matters. Why is it that we can become so locked into our own perspectives and increase the polarization by doing so? Would it help if we understood the other party’s perspective too? Would we find common ground or solutions in doing so?
Perhaps before we try to understand the other’s perspective, we need to start with our own. We form perspectives on subjects, people and situations over time, sometimes we do so through our experiences and too often by the stories we add to those experiences and through our judgement of what is right and wrong, our moral code, value system and beliefs. When such a perspective is negative, it was often caused by us having felt threatened, shamed, guilt or anger about the hurt that s/he may have caused others or us or because it conflicts with our own moral code.
From experience I know that we start to believe the stories we tell ourselves and in doing so we get stuck in those perspectives we have formed about a situation or a person. As indicated in a previous blog, 90% of our stress originates from things that have not happened yet, from things we tell ourselves and things we fear, whilst perhaps only 10% of that may come true.
Being stuck in our stories and perspectives, we limit healthier outcomes to situations. Perhaps then we need to ask ourselves, “how have my perspectives limited opportunities for me or negatively impacted relationships for me”? or “How would letting go of some of my perspectives open up opportunities for improved relationships or outcomes for me”?
“I free myself not by trying to be free, but by simply noticing how I am imprisoning myself in the very moment I am imprisoning myself.” Rick Carson – Taming your Gremlin
At the retreat I attended last year, I was given this tip to use when I felt triggered by something someone said; write the statement which triggered me down & do not respond to it immediately. Reflect on what about the statement triggered me? Is it the words themselves or could it be because of a perspective I hold about the person or the situation? If indeed so, think about what the desired outcome is that I want to and then respond at a later stage, in a manner which will achieve that desired and often healthier outcome.
The interesting thing about following this advice was that I soon realized that past unresolved hurts held me back from responding in a healthy manner which could serve either the collective situation better or for it to not cause me further frustration, resentment or anger.
Once I realized that, I no longer had to follow this practice because I was able to recognize the unhealthy perspective held and could respond in a healthier way. It does not mean that the anger etc. dissipated, it means that I acknowledged it. Being able to acknowledge it, I was able to start dealing with it, with surprising calmness.
Dr Susan David states in her Ted Talk “we might obsessively brood on our feelings, getting stuck inside our heads. We become hooked on being right or victimized by our own “news feed”. (Ted Talk included under the Resources tab)
She continues to say that, “we also know that accuracy matters. In my own research, I found that words are essential. We often use quick and easy labels to describe our feelings. When we label our emotions accurately, we are more able to discern the precise cause of our feelings. And what scientists call the readiness potential in our brain is activated, allowing us to take concrete steps. But not just any steps, the right steps for us. Because our emotions are data.”
Now in case you’re thinking, “Lou-Anne that is only one researcher’s opinion”, let me then add what Dr Brené Brown said when interviewed on the publication of her book Rising Strong, “this unconscious storytelling leaves us stuck. We keep tripping over the same issues, and after we fall, we find it hard to get back up again. In my research on shame and vulnerability, I’ve also learned a lot about resilience. People who are skilled at recovering from setbacks, have one common characteristic: They can recognize their own confabulations and challenge them. The good news is that we can rewrite these stories. We just have to be brave enough to reckon with our deepest emotions.”
She defines confabulations as a lie told honestly. To confabulate is to replace missing information with something false that we believe to be true. So, a confabulation can be “well she is only worried about saving her own job and won’t listen to what I have to say….”
And then add to that the conspiracy theories which we can get caught into, these are stories based on limited real data and plentiful imagined data, blended into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality.
She concludes that the most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness.”
Dealing with our unhealthy perspectives requires us to acknowledge that this is an unhealthy perspective, made up largely by the stories I have told myself and to then acknowledge all the good in ourselves, seek the positive out in ourselves so that we are able to let go of the falsely held believes which fuelled us shaping these falsely held perspectives. We turn ourselves into victims in our minds, someone becomes the persecutor and we relay this to our trusted friends hoping they will rescue us or even further conspire with us. The only way to end this triangle is to acknowledge that it exists and to then step out if it.
And that ladies and gentlemen is how we come to form or create our perspectives and how they get us stuck.
Note I am not here referring to fact-based perspectives, based on data from reliable sources, but ones formed through opinions, our fears, emotions, stories we tell ourselves, enhanced often through confabulations and conspiracies.
The Lenses through which we experience the world
So now that we have acknowledged our own perspectives, what about that of the other party we’re dealing with? In negotiations we are taught to take the perspective of the other party in preparing for the negotiation.
The challenge comes in trying to understand the why of their perspectives and I have through years of substantive negotiations with Trade Unions learnt that asking why is not going to provide us with a quick answer, as perspective are formed not only by the stories we tell ourselves but also by our values, beliefs and our experiences.
We teach young children about perspective taking but for me the challenge with that is that it is laden with assumptions. What I have found particularly through my years of consulting experience, and it is something we taught analysts in their 1st analyst school, and that is perspective getting or learning to understand the perspectives of others. I have since termed that peeling the onion until you get to the core and what I mean by that is not accepting only the first response but going deeper so that you not only understand what is in front of you but the motivations and needs behind that 1st response.
There is no magic trick to that, other than to ask the right open-ended questions, to listen, really listen and to ask more questions in response to what you heard.
This last part is actually really important, sometimes we go into a situation with a list of pre-prepared questions we think we ought to ask and through doing so we show the other person that we are not listening to what they are saying but rather we want to plough through our questions. If you follow this approach you won’t get to the real causes or truth and you will still not really understand. In the Resources tab I have listed some useful questions, please just maybe start with one and listen and based on the responses ask more relevant questions. In Coaching training, we are taught to avoid questions starting with “Why” because when faced with a why question we may feel judged and when people feel judged, they tend to shut down or respond in anger or you will simply get a closed ended response.
Getting perspectives is what Brené Brown defines as Rumbling. “A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.”
I can assure you that perspective-getting will significantly increase the quality of your understanding of the other persons perspective so much more than perspective-taking.
This reminds me of lines from the Sydney Pollack movie “The Interpreter” between Sean Penn & Nicole Kidman when she says to him,
“We’re stuck, aren’t we? You and l?
We’re kepéla.
lt means standing on opposite sides of the river.
Give me a reason to get to the other side.”
Another relevant quote from this movie is this one,
“The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it’s not shouting. Even when it’s just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies… when it’s telling the truth.”
I leave you with this comment by poet & philosopher David Whyte on courage & vulnerability,
“The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.”
May you find the courage to walk fully through the door, opening up new opportunities for you, no longer stuck by the perspectives you held which do not serve you in any way.