Day 2: Understanding

I wrote a blog yesterday as Mental Health Awareness Week kicked off - you can check it out here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/day-1-kindness-tom-manning-

On day 2 I wanted to talk about Understanding.

We cannot really demonstrate a real level of understanding of another if we don't, well, understand them.

And what I mean is - if we don't have a good understanding of behaviour, of why people respond to events as they do then it's very difficult to understand them.

Have you ever said "I just don't understand it, why would someone do that?"

And there you go - the words came right out your mouth - you didn't understand.

If you don't understand the most terrible of crimes you probably don't understand that colleague that's a bit rude, that driver who cuts you up, the person at Tesco who jumped the queue or anyone who annoys you.

People do destructive things because they either feel afraid, insecure or are in some kind of emotional pain - all of these things may be unconscious to them - but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist - just because you can't see something painful with your eyes does not mean it's not there.

Let's examine some examples:

Anger is often driven from fear, jealousy from insecurity, the need for control from fear, the need to be perfect from the pain of not being good enough - the list goes on and on.

Inferiority, superiority, arrogance on and on we could go.

Now, when someone is rude to you, angry towards you, disrespectful, or puts you down you can know that this isn't because they're a bad person it's because they are afraid and insecure - in this light we really can think differently about them can't we.

That doesn't mean we condone their behaviour - but we can learn to understand it.

And that.

That's a real gift.

Just to understand someone.

We can take all the judgement out of it.

People don't lie because they are bad, they lie because they're afraid.

The more understanding we can develop the more compassionate we can be.

Maybe one of the kindest things we can do is to just not bite back and instead just quietly understand.

Please like, share and comment if you found this blog helpful.

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Tom helps organisations build healthy, high performing teams.