How I Came Up With It
My line of writing this week has been on the all so important topic of communication. I wanted to start the year off with a reminder of the importance of having and using the right tools for communication. To me, the thing that ties all communication is the view. What do I mean by the view? I am speaking about the ability to be able to look at things from not only your angle but the angle of the other party as well. Sounds familiar doesn’t it: The View From A Different Angle.
Two years ago, I read a book (thank you Nora) called How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It, by Patricia Love and Steven Stosny. The book is not so much on how to fix a marriage but is more about learning to understand the inherent differences between men and women as they relate to the fundamentals of relationships. Plain and simple, we just think and process differently.
One of the topics in the book that really spoke to me, and I still quote often, is the concept of vision. I do indeed mean how we see things, but it goes a little deeper than just the physical. Patricia and Steven use two terms to describe vision: monocular and binocular. Monocular vision is seeing things only from the perspective of how they affect us. I think of it as All About Me Vision. Binocular vision is the ability to step out of your shoes and into the shoes of the other person in an attempt to understand how they are seeing things. It is being able to look past being right or wrong and just trying to understand what they are experiencing. If we can understand, realizing understanding does not always mean agreement, what is happening in the other shoes, it can help the entire situation. It enhances that all so important “C” word: Connection.
How is your vision today? Sometime today, there will be an opportunity to step out of your shoes and get into someone else’s. Take the opportunity to change your view by changing your angle.
Rodney - "I See You"
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