What My Personal Situation Taught Me About Dealing With People
Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash
I was dealing with a rather stressful situation a few months back, where I was trying to apply some of my past reflections. One mantra I kept coming back to was going with the flow in its truest sense, examining the aspects I may have been resisting.
Despite my continuous efforts, I noticed that I wasn’t at peace as much as I had been in previous situations. There had been progress — movement, not stagnation — but I still felt resistance. I couldn’t figure out how to let go because I wasn’t even sure what I was holding onto. It wasn’t until one of my meditation sessions, that I finally understood.
While I had managed to see the people on the “other” side as part of the situation, I was still feeling resistance toward people on “my” side. That’s where a lot of my “shoulds” kept me irritated. After all, we’re a team — so why didn’t they see things the way I did? Why were they behaving like this? It would have been so much easier if they thought and acted a certain way. There lay the resistance — the need to control what was beyond my control, the desire to change the auto-pilot behaviors of those around me.
I had accepted the rough terrain (the situation) where I was forced to flow, but I hadn’t fully accepted the elements (my people) flowing with me. In wanting others to change, I failed to notice that I, too, was stuck in my ways.
Much stress and conflict arise from resisting acceptance — and this applies to everything and everyone, even those on our own team, our Team №1.
With this realization, the struggle became clearer. Two key points stood out:
They were expecting me to understand their perspective, just as I was trying to get them to understand mine. In our mutual desire to change each other’s stance, neither of us was truly listening — neither to each other’s words nor to each other as people we care about.
The story in my head was that if they saw my perspective, they’d also feel at ease. I was being “the mature and wise one” in my mind. But in reality, all I was doing was trying to have things my way so I could stay in my comfort zone.
With these thoughts in mind, I started journaling to gain more clarity and figure out what I could do differently. Here are the questions I used.
If I were to ask actors to reenact one of these interactions, what would I tell the actor playing my part to do? What kind of energy should they convey?
What would I tell the actors playing the other people? To help them understand their characters, how would I explain these people’s desires and wishes toward me?
Viewing a situation like a movie helps create some distance and allows us to evaluate things more clearly (and imagining different faces helps even more). This exercise helped me see what I was doing to exacerbate the situation, what pre-conceived notions were getting in the way of truly listening, and what discomforts I was trying to avoid by placing blame on others.
The final question I asked was: What could the actor playing me do differently if I wanted the scene to play out differently — while all the other characters remained the same? Since I couldn’t control them, how would the actor approach the interactions differently? How would they respond?
As I pondered over this last question, I felt a lot more ease and support.
When we watch a movie, we begin to understand the characters, and we see them for who they are — without resistance. We may not always like the characters, but we can predict their behaviors. Yet in real life, with the people closest to us, resistance shows up — even when they’re simply being who they are.
One of the basic human needs is to be accepted for who we are. So, can we begin with acceptance — that people are being who they are? We may want to change the way our interactions happen, but are we doing so from a place of resistance, or openness and acceptance?
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