How do you see yourself? How do you see other people? If you were to try to describe a person, either yourself or someone else – How would you do so? What words would you choose to use?
Do you see people, yourself included, as individuals? As members of society? As family or friends, strangers or lovers? How do you relate to other people?
We all have variety of different ways in which we see and define our relationships with other people, and with ourselves. Some common ways of how we identify with other people are:
- Seeing people as better or worse than us
- Defining people by the roles they carry out – Lover, daughter, friend, enemy
- Judging people by their beliefs (and how they agree or disagree with our own)
- Comparisons of worth through status symbols and social standing
All relationships, including those we have with ourselves, are strongly influenced by our own unique viewpoint – the opinions and beliefs we hold about each other. One of the most important factors in ensuring successful, open communication is understanding the way we see people, and how our opinions and ideas about them can affect what we’re trying to say and how it is received.
Aspects of a Person
As we build a relationship with someone, we gradually cultivate and come to believe in a broad range of interpretations about that person. Except in extreme cases, none of the ways mentioned above are particularly exclusive – our identification with others is most often down to a combination of factors – ideas, beliefs and opinions we hold, which I tend to refer to as aspects of a person.
Typical aspects of a person, which help or hinder how we relate to them:
- How we feel about them – Do we love or hate this person? (Or ourself?)
- Our opinions of the roles they carry out – We might be proud of them for being a good father, annoyed at someone for being a lousy employee or happy someone is our friend.
- Religious Beliefs or Political Alignment – Let’s not go there!
- Perceived Social Status – Do they have greater or lesser standing than our own?
- Wealth (or lack thereof) – Who has the most?
- Qualities we admire – Courage, discipline, a caring nature…
- Flaws we dislike – Hogging the remote, atrocious driving, personal hygiene issues…
In learning to understand how relationships are built, I started to use the term aspects because it is neither positive or negative – Even with people we are very physically or emotionally close to, the concepts we hold about them are rarely exclusively positive – there are often negative opinions which colour how we see them, if only on occasion.
Most perception is projection – we often like or dislike in others what we most like or dislike in ourselves. Commonly, the deciding factor in whether a relationship between ourself and another, and how positive or negative it is, is how well the aspects of the other person match the self-held beliefs and aspects of ourselves.
Dwelling on the Flaws
Without conscious awareness, it’s all to easy to dwell on the negative aspects of a relationship
In most person-to-person relationships, the aspects and ideas we each hold about the other are going to be a selection of positive and negative. We may love our sibling, but dislike the way they borrow our stuff. We may struggle to relate to our boss, but admire the way they handle problems.
Unfortunately, unless there is some measure of conscious awareness in how we identify with other people, it is all too easy for us to dwell on the negative aspects of a relationship. The partner we adore becomes an ogre when they don’t let us get our own way… The boss we respect becomes a tyrant when they give you more work than you want… The pleasant waiter becomes an incompetent when the food is wrong, or delivered cold.
In times like this, a single aspect about someone overshadows the rest – which may all be predominantly positive – that one decision or action, no matter how short-term, can temporarily drown out all the happy, loving, positive parts of that relationship. When we see others only as a collection of aspects, then it is easy for us to allow just one of those aspects to become dominant.
This tendency is especially prevalent when we know very little about someone – We’re much more geared up to focus upon the negative aspects of strangers than we are the positive. How often do your criticize the driving of other people on the road? How often have you ever thought “Wow, that person is an excellent, courteous driver?” Yeah, me neither…
For some of us, entire relationships can become centered around a particular flaw, or negative aspect. This is what happens when we hate people – we have selected one aspect of who they are and turned that single fact into our entire definition of them. In some cases, perhaps involving violence or abuse, the nature of that negative aspect means that intense dislike or even hate is morally justified, but more often than not it is some small perception about another that has grown out of all proportion.
Persecution of others, because of religion, nationality or class, is at the extreme end of this spectrum. Over and over in our history, those in power have singled out one aspect of a group of people – their religious beliefs, where they were born or the color of their skin – and because they see it as a negative, they have used it as excuse to dispossess, torture and execute those people – committing atrocities in the name of one single aspect of that group.
The Whole-Person Paradigm
In order to transcend this limiting way of seeing and relating to others, we need to learn see other people as more than just a collection of aspects – we need to see above and beyond our facts and opinions of them and see them as whole and complete human beings.
This is not about changing things about other people, it’s about changing things about ourselves. We have to learn to monitor how we think about other people, and to correct ourselves when we realize we are thinking about aspects, not about people.
The best way to begin is by paying closer attention to how you talk about and think about others – start to notice the words you use, and what you’re focusing on. When you become more familiar with paying attention to what you’re thinking, you can start to look beyond it and see what judgments and beliefs are affecting what you’re thinking. You will begin to understand at a very personal level how your relationships are affected by the way you identify with others, and you will be able to look deeper and see people as who they really are.
This simple change is difficult for a lot of people because it involves having to let-go of deeply entrenched judgments and beginning to accept others, and ourselves for who we truly are. For those of us who are strongly attached to our opinions of others, this can be quite painful or shameful – If those beliefs we had about someone caused us to treat them poorly or unfairly, it can be a tough process to release those opinions and accept that person as more than just what we thought.
The value of this making change cannot be easily explained – At a low level it is simply about noticing how you think, and trying to be a bit more relaxed and open-minded. At a higher level, this change can achieve a quantum leap forward in your relationships with others, bringing greater strength, depth and clarity to your ability to relate to other people.
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