Last month, I spoke about the importance of being able to see multiple perspectives. In an era of information and misinformation, it’s become futile to convince someone of your point of view. There’s just too much data and it can be massaged in various ways to make it support a particular perspective.
If you want to influence someone, it starts shifting from your own perception of the situation to taking on another perspective. It starts with understanding their point of view.
That can seem simple, but it’s not easy.
We’ve got more information silos now – echo chambers reflecting our own biases, political orientations, tastes and opinions. It’s become even less common to engage with differences. In a way, we don’t have to. We’ve got people who seem to think with us and agree with us as they access the same information as us.
There is also a biological challenge with understanding another’s point of view. When we hear something different than what we believe is “true” – it can feel destabilizing and threaten how we see the world. That causes an emotional and chemical reaction in us where we close ourselves off from even entertaining that different perspective. That’s a human animal reaction. We all have that brain hardware. It can happen to any of us.
The trap is if we think there’s only one reality, we react in the face of a new reality being presented to us. If we expecting the world to only have one truth, our truth, then we close up and defend ourselves, our point of view, our reality.
So, we need to feel relaxed to be able to open to another perspective. That’s why starting with understanding the other person is so disarming. As Stephen Covey said in his classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:
“Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood”
This applies not just to someone who has a different point of view, it also applies to people who appear to change right before our eyes.
“They are not the person who I thought they were.”
This is something I hear a lot as a mediator
You know when you think you know someone, and then they do something that seems out of character for them? Then perhaps they do it again. And perhaps again.
At a certain point, you decide “I thought I knew them – but I don’t.”
Yet, people are like perspectives – we have different parts of us. We are a collection of multiple perspectives inside of us too.
We have the part that is fun and playful and relaxed. We have the part that comes out when we are stressed and not our best selves. That’s the part that I’ve seen a lot in conflict.
I am also familiar with Internal Family Systems – a way of looking at an internal cast of characters within us – many parts, multiple perspectives. We carry around an internal family of differing perspectives, personalities, wishes and characteristics.
What I’ve come to see is that one part of us is not more real than another part.
So, when we encounter something in another person we don’t like, it’s not that they were duping us somehow before. They have different parts. We have many parts and some we may hide from others but other parts may be hidden from ourselves. Sometimes we are conscious we are hiding parts of ourselves; other times we are not.
We are complex. And, all of our parts are authentic to us. Not all our parts might be healthy or good to impose on another, but they are all our parts.
Perhaps people are like kaleidoscopes or rainbows. We have a part of us that is whole, perfect, creative, at ease. We have a part that is broken, wounded, hurt, diseased. But none of it is all of who we are.
We are a multitude of parts. And those parts can shift if we are hangry, or tired, or distracted or triggered about something.
So, then, who are we really?
Are we simply shifting parts? Is our identity fluid? Amorphous?
Or are we more than the sum of our parts?
In addition to parts, we do also seem to have a deeper, non-shifting centre. In Internal Family Systems, they call this our essence. The goal is to foster this essence into “self-leadership” where this essence Self becomes a mediator or leader to our internal parts. With this essence Self at the helm, it can establish a trusting and compassionate relationship with all our parts, helping them heal, transform, and integrate.
In religious traditions, this essence self has been called the soul.
I’ve always loved the Rumi poem The Guest House, as it gives me a glimpse into those parts and our true essence. Perhaps our soul is most like the guest house itself. The rest are simply parts.
That’s the part that we want to speak to in conflict – that deepest, truest, most authentic part of us.
We want to speak to and draw from this essence self as we engage in these multiple perspectives inside ourselves and outside ourselves.
Let’s become fluid in multiple perspectives so that we can source our true source of identity in the Guest House itself.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
