Everyone sees the world differently. Your specific experiences and interactions with other people and your environment play a big role in your beliefs and how you view the world. Some of your views may be similar to others’, but many aspects of your views and beliefs are unique to you.
Everything about you—your culture and ethnicity, your environment, and the people in your life—has a bearing on your perspective. For example, if you live in a city, your experiences and worldview will differ from those of someone who lives in a small rural town. Specific characteristics can also impact your view of the world, for example, whether you’re tall or short, whether you’re athletic or artistic, whether you get As or Cs in school, or whether you’re an only child or one of five kids in your family.
All of these factors are important, because your view of the world helps you make sense of what’s happening around you. It helps you decide what’s important, what you need to pay attention to, and what you can safely ignore. Yet it can also be limiting and get in the way of understanding, communicating, and connecting with others, particularly those whose experiences have been very different from yours.
In short, your perspective guides your behavior and determines the choices you make and how you interact with others. And although people often make the assumption that everyone shares their perspective, this isn’t the case. Others are always behaving, making choices, and interacting based upon their own perspective and experiences. Often the differences are subtle enough that they don’t make communication difficult, but at times people’s perspectives and beliefs are enough at odds with yours that you need to clarify your own view or seek clarification from them.
The purpose of this chapter is to offer you skills that will allow you to be open and understanding in your interactions with others. This approach will help you make more diverse, enriching, and meaningful connections in your life. By bringing awareness to the differences between your own beliefs and the beliefs of others, as well as the limitations inherent in all perspectives, you can increase your understanding. As a result, your world will feel more connected and dynamic.
kelly Even though I spent part of my childhood living in a diverse city, I was surprised by the variety of viewpoints I encountered when I arrived at college. For example, I don’t have an intimate connection with traditional religion, so at times the environment of my Catholic university feels unfamiliar to me. The fact that I don’t understand many Catholic traditions can make me feel awkward and uninformed. I also sometimes feel excluded, like I’m not part of a community that has such a presence on campus. Recognizing how my beliefs are different helped me start making an effort to learn about other students’ perspectives and belief systems. Having open, inclusive conversations with them about their faith helps me broaden my perspective and allows me to feel more comfortable in my school community.
Sometimes people are quick to notice differences between themselves and others. This creates distance. People tend to be attracted to those who are similar to them and feel safer with what’s familiar. One way to bridge the distance between yourself and others is compassion, which enhances all social relationships.
Compassion helps us see others as being similar to ourselves. After all, there are a lot of commonalities in our basic human experience. For one, we all suffer. In essence, you practice compassion whenever you recognize other people’s suffering and feel a desire to alleviate that suffering. Compassion means seeing that others, no matter what their culture, ethnicity, or other characteristics, are fundamentally like you, and that feelings of inadequacy and disappointment are universal. From this perspective, you’re aware that the pain you feel in difficult times is the same pain others feel in difficult times. As a result, they no longer seem to be separate from you.
Exercise: Cultivating Compassion
Think of a situation in which you found yourself making judgments or conclusions based upon limited knowledge about someone’s background, culture, ethnicity, or a group the person was part of. Did your judgments create an obstacle to being open to exploring what the two of you might have in common? Did you remain open enough to recognize that there were similarities you overlooked or missed early on? Take some time to write about your experiences in your journal.
The bottom line is that when you bring kindness and openness to your experiences and those of others, you’ll feel more connected. However, all of that said, you cannot truly know what others are experiencing unless they share it with you. And even then, their communication may be unclear or vague. That’s where clarification, the topic of the next section, comes in.
In this section, you’ll learn how to use clarifying questions to better understand your beliefs, values, and perspectives and those of others. As you’ll learn, all perspectives can have limitations or be distorted. We’ll explain why this is the case and how you can notice when it’s happening, and then give you some techniques for challenging these limitations and distortions.
Instead of assuming you know what other people are talking about, it’s important to make an effort to understand their beliefs and perspectives. You have to ask questions to uncover what other people really mean. Don’t take even simple words at face value, assuming that your definitions of words like “confused,” “happy,” or “unfair” are the same as other people’s definitions.
One common way communication and relationships get into trouble is when two people use the same words but associate them with different meanings. Terms like “relationship,” “love,” “fidelity,” “right,” “wrong,” “selfish,” “duty,” “lonely,” and “respect” can mean different things to different people. You can probably see how this could lead to trouble.
There are four particularly common communication habits that tend to obscure people’s perspectives and beliefs:
kelly We’ve provided examples of each problematic communication habit, along with examples of clarifying questions. These will probably read like stiff, unnatural conversations. I’m sure you don’t talk in these ways—and we aren’t recommending that you adopt these particular questions. We simply provide them to bring awareness to the problems that can result when people don’t ask clarifying questions.
Omissions are pretty obvious. People often make incomplete statements that leave out important information. If you aren’t aware of this, you may fill in the blanks based on your own beliefs about the world, in which case you could completely misunderstand what the other person is saying. The way to deal with omissions is to resist making automatic assumptions and instead ask simple, straightforward questions. For example, if your roommate says he’s upset and leaves it at that, don’t assume you know what’s making him upset. Ask “About what?” or “About whom?”
Here are some examples of statements with major omissions and questions you can use to clarify them.
Exercise: Noticing Omissions
Think of a recent experience when you didn’t ask for clarification of an omission and it resulted in a misunderstanding or miscommunication. After you come up with an example, write about it in your journal. Describe the exchange. What word or phrase led to the misunderstanding? What would you ask to avoid the misunderstanding? This happens a lot, and it happens to everyone, yet we often don’t notice it. One reason is that we’re often in such a rush that it seems more efficient to fill in the missing information than ask for clarification.
Using vague pronouns like “it,” “that,” and “they” is a common cause of confusion and misunderstanding. Without clarification, it can be easy to think these words are standing in for something or someone other than what the speaker intends. Ask questions to make sure you know what a pronoun refers to. Here are some examples.
Exercise: Noticing Vague Pronouns
Now that you’re aware of the problem with vague pronouns, you’ll probably start to notice a lot of them, in other people’s statements and your own. Think of a few examples of times when this happened and write about them in your journal.
Although verbs are more specific than pronouns, they too can be vague, especially common verbs that can have many meanings, like “move,” “touch,” or “see.” Some verbs, like “tickle,” “yawn,” or “blink,” are more specific and less prone to misinterpretation. If someone says, “She doesn’t really know me,” the verb “know” is pretty vague. Does it mean “understand me at a deep emotional level,” “possess certain historical facts about me,” or “grasp my motivations”? Here are some examples of vague verb statements and questions that can clarify them.
Exercise: Clarifying Vague Verbs
Again, take some time to consider recent interactions. Can you identify any conversations that would have been more beneficial or successful if you’d asked a clarifying question when a vague verb was used? If so, write about this in your journal, including any clarifying questions you might have asked in response to the statement.
kelly Recently, a friend told me that he’d started dating his ex-girlfriend again. She hadn’t treated him well before, so I said I thought he should be careful not to move too quickly. His reply was “She’s changed.” I didn’t know what he meant by that vague verb statement. I wish I’d asked him questions like “Has she changed her behavior? Has she changed her appearance? What is she doing differently?” How she’s changed could make a big difference in whether or not she’ll treat him better.
Abstractions are common words people use all the time to refer to complicated concepts, situations, and circumstances, for example, “relationship,” “problem,” or “compatibility.” They’re handy because they have broad meanings and can encapsulate complex things. But that’s also what makes them vague and prone to obscuring clear communication.
Many of the common words people use to describe feelings are actually abstractions: “hate,” “fear,” “sadness,” “guilt,” “jealousy,” and so on. For example, if your mother says she’s jealous of you, what does she really mean? Is she envying your youth, or is this just her way of trying to get you to include her in some of your weekend plans? Sometimes you can tell by context, but sometimes you can’t. It’s usually better to ask questions than to guess.
Say your best friend tells you she feels guilty about lying to her boyfriend. Does that mean she wishes she had told the truth, wishes she hadn’t done something she felt she had to lie about, or wishes she’d been able to avoid saying anything? And for her, is that guilt a slightly uncomfortable feeling or something that feels fundamentally wrong? Until you ask, you can’t really know.
Another problem with vague nouns is that they can be part of a passive approach, as these examples show: “We need to make a decision about our chemistry project” instead of “Let’s decide which reaction to demonstrate.” Or “You know you can count on our support” instead of “We support you.” Here are some more examples of statements that use abstractions or vague nouns, along with questions that could clarify them. In this case, we also provide examples of the more precise communication that could result from asking clarifying questions.
Exercise: Clarifying Abstractions with Precise Statements
Over the next few days, tune in to conversations and notice when you or others use abstractions and other vague nouns. Then, using the format above, record a few of these statements in your journal, along with clarifying questions and new, more precise statements that could result from this approach.
Asking for more information about someone else’s perspective can go a long way toward clarifying communication, but sometimes you need to go further and identify the limitations of your own perspective or the perspectives of others. Certain language patterns can be useful signals that you’re dealing with a limitation, whether your own or someone else’s:
Absolutes are exaggerations or overgeneralizations. They usually include words such as “always,” “never,” “everyone,” “nobody,” “all,” or “none,” making them extreme and often untrue. They’re problematic in communication because they leave little or no room for compromise. This can be frustrating and alienating.
You can challenge absolutes by asking others if they’ve ever had an experience that contradicts their statement. For example, if someone tells you that you’re always late, you can ask, “Can’t you think of even one instance when I was on time?” Here are some absolute statements and questions to challenge them.
Exercise: Clarifying Absolutes
Over the next few days, notice when you or others make absolute statements. Write a few examples in your journal, along with alternative statements that are more accurate and nuanced.
Implied limits involve using terms that suggest you or others have no choice—that there’s nothing anyone can do. They’re expressed with words like “can’t,” “must,” “have to,” “should,” “ought to,” “necessary,” or “impossible.”
Implied limits fall into two categories: statements containing words like “can’t” and “impossible,” which support a perspective of the world in which certain options are entirely unavailable; and statements with words like “should” or “ought to,” which imply some kind of moral judgment or obligation. “Should” statements can be especially damaging because they indicate that you’re a bad person if you break the implied rules.
Many people limit the scope of their lives by not questioning these kinds of implied limits. For example, you might say, “I can’t speak in public at all. Even the smallest group makes me feel tongue-tied.” With these kinds of statements, you cut yourself off from attempting to go beyond the implied limit. To challenge this kind of statement, pose a what-if question to yourself: “What would happen if I did address a crowd of people, like at a school assembly?” This directs your attention to the future and imagining a situation in which you might speak in a public setting. Or you might ask, “What am I afraid is going to happen if I try to speak in public?” This strategy is likely to turn your focus to the past to examine where your fear comes from.
“Should” statements and other moral judgments can be challenged in the same way: by imagining a hypothetical situation or considering the origin of the rule. For example, if someone says you shouldn’t hang out with a certain crowd, you might respond along these lines: “You say I shouldn’t hang out with that group of kids at school. What are you afraid might happen if I do?”
Here are some statements with implied limits and sample questions that could be used to challenge them.
Exercise: Challenging Implied Limits
Over the next few days, notice when you or others make statements that contain implied limits and write a few examples in your journal. Then challenge them by imagining hypothetical future situations in which the limit doesn’t prevent taking a certain action, or by examining the fear associated with the limit and what the origins of that fear may be.
When people make general statements about the world, those statements are typically based on their beliefs and values about what’s right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, or good and bad. One way to tell when people are communicating implied values is when they use sweeping global labels such as “greedy,” “corrupt,” or “ridiculous.” This language pattern often indicates that a person is unaware that there are other valid perspectives.
One good way to challenge statements that contain implied values is to encourage people to discuss their own values and be open to the reality that other people may have different values, beliefs, and perspectives. For example, if someone says “Romantic comedies are so boring,” you can ask, “Who thinks they’re so boring?” Here are some statements containing implied values and questions to challenge them.
Exercise: Challenging Implied Values
Review the preceding examples of statements containing implied values. Then come up with your own questions to challenge them and write them in your journal.
When your view of the world is distorted, you can’t see many of the opportunities and alternatives open to you. In this way, your experience of what life has to offer becomes impoverished. There are three language patterns that can lead to distortions:
Cause and effect errors result from the belief that one person can cause another person to experience certain emotions or inner states, and that the second person has no choice in how he or she responds. To see how this works, imagine that you’re about to go off to college and your best friend says, “Having you move away makes me feel abandoned, and it will ruin my life,” implying that your actions are responsible for how she’ll feel and the choices she’ll make. To challenge this language pattern, you need to ask two questions: Are your actions genuinely responsible for your friend’s feelings? And does she actually have no other way of responding to the change? For example, you could say, “What is it that makes you feel abandoned about my leaving for college, and how will my choice to leave ruin your life?” This is a gentle reminder that everybody is responsible for their own feelings. You can follow up with something like “Are you happy for me? Sad I’ll be gone?” Below are some statements with cause and effect errors, along with questions to challenge them.
Exercise: Challenging Cause and Effect Errors
Over the next few days, notice when you or others make statements that contain cause and effect errors and write a few examples in your journal. Then come up with some questions that could suggest that the speakers are responsible for their own feelings and responses.
We discussed mind reading briefly in chapter 1, in the section on listening blocks. As a reminder, it happens whenever people assume they know what other people are thinking without clearly communicating with them. Mind reading distorts people’s understanding of the world because it involves making assumptions that probably aren’t true. This communication problem is caused by the human tendency to project, meaning a person believes others feel, think, behave, and react the same way he or she does. When you project your own reality onto others, you don’t get a chance to discover their truth. Another variation on this theme is assuming that others know how you’re feeling, and this can cause trouble too.
When you think others may be engaging in mind reading, ask questions like “How do you know that?” and “What makes you think he feels that way?” Of course, you can also ask the same kinds of questions of yourself. Here are some mind reading statements and questions designed to challenge them.
kelly I get especially frustrated when other people engage in mind reading during serious, emotionally charged conversations. When I’m trying to get an important point across and the other person interrupts me because they think they know where I’m headed, it derails the conversation.
Exercise: Challenging Mind Reading
Recall a recent experience when mind reading interfered with communication, and write about it in your journal. Then come up with some questions that could have been helpful in challenging the mind reader’s assumptions.
Presuppositions are parts of a statement that must be true in order for the whole statement to be valid. Here’s an example: In the statement “Since you got so obnoxious at the last party, let’s skip this one,” the decision to not go to the next party is only valid if you accept being obnoxious at the previous party as a fact. To challenge this statement, you could ask, “How was I obnoxious last time?” Here are some statements containing presuppositions, along with questions to challenge them.
Exercise: Challenging Presuppositions
Think of a recent experience when someone made a statement that involved a presupposition. Record it in your journal, then think about how you’d challenge the statement now that you’ve seen some examples. Write your new response in your journal.
Using clarifying questions will help you navigate unclear communications that may include omissions, vague pronouns, vague verbs, or abstractions and other vague nouns. Some of the other skills outlined in this chapter will help you challenge absolutes, implied limits, implied values, cause and effect errors, mind reading, and presuppositions. But even with practice in all of these skills, you’ll probably still sometimes have difficult communications due to misunderstandings. Consider what your role was in any misunderstandings and then, if appropriate, offer a sincere apology.
Everyone appreciates an apology when they’ve been hurt. Just be aware that the phrasing of an apology is important. It must be heartfelt on your part, and it must feel sincere to the other person. It’s crucial to convey that you understand that what you said or did hurt the other person’s feelings. Phrase your apology in a way that indicates you’re taking responsibility for your words and actions and not blaming the other person for his or her response. “I’m sorry that your feelings are hurt” won’t cut it because it doesn’t indicate that you’re taking responsibility. Instead, you might say, “I’m sorry that I said something that hurt your feelings.” Apologizing well takes practice, but it’s worth the effort. This is an important skill for making connections and keeping relationships strong.
Your perspective, beliefs, and values shape who you are as an individual. As you mature, it’s important to be open to other perspectives; that way your beliefs and values can grow with you. So pursue interactions and relationships that expand your world, and be compassionate in these conversations.
The clarifying techniques you’ve learned in this chapter can be extremely helpful, but don’t use them all the time. Challenging every vague statement you hear in casual conversation would be incredibly annoying. Use these techniques when you hear someone you care about say something that’s unclear, confusing, or obviously the result of a limiting perspective.
How do you know when a speaker’s statement needs to be clarified? The best sign is if you feel puzzled—if what’s said is confusing, seems incomplete, or just feels wrong. At those times, clarification will prevent you from jumping to conclusions and help you grasp what the speaker really means. As a bonus, seeking to understand others’ perspectives will enrich your understanding of the world.
Finally, when you use these clarifying techniques, be cautious and gentle. Challenging someone’s perspective can seem hostile, so approach clarification with an attitude of sincere interest and curiosity, not aggression. Most importantly, be open to challenging and expanding your own perspective on the world, including your beliefs and values.