Different Perspectives
Often, it is useful to assess an event or outcome from several different
perspectives: From our own perspective, from the perspective of another
person and from the perspective of an independent observer. John Grinder
and Judith DeLozier refer to these perspectives as perceptual positions.
Perceptual positions provide a balanced approach to thinking about an event
or outcome. In situations where there is little or no understanding or
progress, they can provide a way of developing new understandings and
creating new choices.
The three perceptual positions are:
* First Position: seeing, hearing and feeling the situation through
your own eyes, ears and feelings. You think in terms of what is important
to you, what you want to achieve.
* Second Position: stepping into the shoes of the other person and
experiencing (seeing, hearing and feeling) the situation as if you were
them. You think in terms of how this situation would appear or be
interpreted by the other person. You've heard the expression: "Before
criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes."
* Third Position: standing back from a situation and experiencing it as
if you were a detached observer. In your mind, you are able to see and hear
yourself and the other person, as if you were a third person. You think in
terms of what opinion, observations or advice would someone offer who is
not involved. You need to be in a strong resourceful state and take an
objective view of your own behaviour and look for opportunities to respond
differently in order to achieve a different and more positive outcome.
Sometimes we get stuck in one of these positions:
* Someone who lives his/her life in first position would tend to focus
on his/her needs rather than the needs of others -- a "self-centered"
attitude. We could say that addicts tend to see the world from first position.
* Someone, who lives their life primarily in second position, is always
thinking about the other person at the expense of their own needs.
Co-dependents or enablers in a dysfunctional or addiction situation would
fit this description. A saying about co-dependents is: "When a co-dependent
dies, someone else's life flashes before their eyes, rather than their own".
* Someone, who lives in third position, would be seen as rather aloof
and a disinterested observer of life - always on the outside looking in.
All three positions are of equal importance and it is useful to consciously
or unconsciously cycle through these positions as we go about our daily
activities.
An Exercise
To illustrate the usefulness of perceptual positions, consider the
following exercise, which you can do alone or have someone guide you
through the steps. Think of a conversation, discussion or disagreement that
you had recently with another person that did not go as well as you had
hoped and the situation remains unresolved. For ease of discussion, I will
assume the other person is a male.
* Are you prepared to explore this situation to find other ways to
handled it, should a similar situation occur in the future? This is an
important question. If you are committed to holding the other person as
wrong and not prepared to learn from your experiences, no matter what, then
it is not worth your time proceeding for this particular situation. Pick
another situation.
* Assuming you answered, "yes" to the first question, get yourself into
a comfortable position, close your eyes and go back to that event looking
through your own eyes seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard and
feeling what you felt during that interaction. You can do this quickly, as
the purpose here is mainly to remind you of the event and what you
experienced. Here you are experiencing the event from first position. When
you are finished, open your eyes, look around the room, stand, stretch your
body - this is called a break state and the intention is to clear your mind
of the internal representations of the event.
* Again make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and this time put
yourself into the other person's body, take on his physiology looking
through his eyes, seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, and to the
best of your ability experiencing how he felt being to be in a conversation
with the person that looks and acts like you! From this other perspective,
notice the facial expressions, body language, hand gestures, tone of voice
and words that are used by this person that looks, behaves and sounds like
you. Does this give you some understanding of why he reacted the way he
did? If you were to give the person that looks like you some advice, from
this perspective, on how to handle the situation differently, what would
that advice be? When you are ready, open your eyes, look around the room,
stand up and stretch. Did you learn something about yourself and how you
could handle it differently next time with potentially a different result?
Often people do and sometimes, they learn even more in the next step.
* Make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and this time look at the
event as if you were a fly on the wall. Some distance in front of you, you
can see a person that looks, behaves and sounds like you and the other
person(s). From this other perspective, notice the facial expressions, body
language, hand gestures, tone of voice and words that that this person who
looks, behaves and sounds like you is using. Can you give this person some
advice on how the situation could be handled differently and just maybe
achieve a different, more positive result? When you are ready, open your
eyes, look around the room, stand up and stretch. How about this time, did
you learn something about yourself?
* Repeat steps 2 -5. This time use the new behaviours and resources
that you identified in steps 3 and 4. Did you notice anything different
this time? Perhaps, an opportunity to achieve a different more positive
result?
I often use this exercise in public presentations. I remember at one event,
as I finished the exercise, a young lady got out of her chair and quickly
left the room. She returned to the room about 20 minutes later and at the
next break came up to me and apologized for leaving the room the way she
had. She went on to explain that about two weeks earlier, she had had a
major fight with her roommate and long-time close friend that resulted in
her moving out and the two of them had not spoken to each other since. As a
result of doing the exercise, she realized how she could have handled the
situation differently and left the room to have a conversation with her
friend. As a result of this new conversation, she was moving back in with
her friend and roommate that very evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment