Be Proactive in Making Connections to Those With Different Views

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The world we live in seems increasingly divided. If you don’t agree with someone, or share their viewpoint on something important, you might want nothing to do with them. You might even make fun of them, or vilify them somehow. This can take place as gossip, on social media or directly to the person. “What is wrong with you?” is either your mindset or your verbal response.

Yet, for each and every person walking around there are connection points. Recently a client shared a vignette to illustrate this. She was talking to someone with whom she has deeply divided political views. She said her blood would boil every time she had to engage with this person. She was to the point where she was apprehensive to have a conversation with them. Somehow, in the latest discussion, the person shared a personal story about their journey from sexual abuse. My client had experienced something very similar in her childhood. For those who have gone through abuse like this, it’s not easy to talk about with anyone. Yet these two people, with very different views, had a shared experience that bound them together like few others. They ended up sharing resources, past feelings, and coping mechanisms. When my client shared this story, she was stunned at how she had shunned this person and disliked them so much, and then found she had one of the deeper discussions around a very difficult topic with that same person.

Finding Similarities

The ties that bind us are everywhere. When you focus on what’s different, what you don’t like about someone else, how they make choices that are opposed to the ones you would make, the glaring divisions become the thing. The ways you aren’t alike, and you can’t understand them, become your story. The more you tell yourself the story, the more real the story becomes and the less able and likely you are to find similarities. Similarities always exist. By virtue of being born human, there are similarities, but on a daily basis you might not want to see them, or prefer to believe they aren’t there.

The next time you encounter someone where your response is to question what’s the matter with them, why they make choices you would never make, and how they are different (and likely wrong as a result), consider how you can identify the connecting pieces. Why do this? Because it’s disastrous to your physical and mental condition to ruminate over someone else’s errant beliefs and choices. Being divided means more to get angry about, more to dislike, and more negativity in your life. You don’t benefit from this. It distracts from the positives around you.

People Are Multifaceted

The next time you encounter someone and you believe you are very different and could not possibly find common ground with that person, consider whether you know all there is to know about them. Human beings are multifaceted and often multilayered. You might think you know all about someone and then find there are many things you have not yet learned. This can even happen with long-term friendships where you just haven’t happened upon a certain topic.

And the next time you want to judge someone for their actions or ideas, ask yourself whether you have ever been judged. How did it feel? Did you want to explain yourself and help the other person or people understand why you believe something, or why you acted in a certain way? It’s interesting how we often want to explain away our own foibles but then criticize others for something similar.

Question Your Filters

The filters we use on the world tell us that one thing is good, while another thing is bad. Decide in this relatively new year to question your filters. Explore what you might be missing about someone else. See if you can find a tie to bind you, rather than a device to further separate you.

It isn’t that you have to like everyone. It isn’t about linking arms and making everyone your friend. It’s about saving your precious energy and not wasting it on people you don’t like or agree with, and instead spending some of that energy to find a mutual understanding. Life simply gets easier when you consistently do this with others.