Reflections of Me Bounce Off You

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We can see ourselves in everything. We can mirror everything, too.

I mirror my husband when his tone shifts and his voice rises with the demonstrative arts of a perturbed bear. My voice becomes his in due time, and where there was one bear there are now two.

It’s one thing to mirror or mimic. This helps us to dance with our situation, learn how to smile, or grow trust.

But things get sticky when we take our imagination and begin to assume we know what’s behind someone’s smile or bearish voice. This is common, and sometimes problematic.

One of the hardest things about developing as a coach, I found, was to learn how not to insert myself into the head of the person I’m listening to. After all — so the misconception goes — if I can assume what lives inside someone’s head, I can begin to solve their problems. Or, failing that, at least I can make an accurate assessment of this person.

But no.

I’ll never get inside someone’s head to do any of these things. I have a heck of a time just trying to assess the contents of my own head.

Humans are story factories. We have fine-tuned ways of making stories all the live long day. Our system is glitchy, though, because our stories don’t require veracity.

They want two fundamental things apparently — conflict and resolution. Something bad happened and then was resolved. This helps us in our ongoing quest to deal with difficulty. Stories teach us essential things and keep societies intact. Or they don’t.

We craft quick stories about the unknowns in our daily life. So-and-so just did something aggressive and now I’m flustered and don’t know what to do [conflict]. It must be because they’re mad at me or they’re a jerk. I’d better steer clear [resolution].

OR

So-and-so just did something absentminded and concerning [conflict]. It must be because they have big issues on their mind. I’m going to show empathy [resolution].

In neither situation did we know more than what we observed. In both cases, we used quick judgment to guide our resolution.

The long history leading up to another’s actions is unknown to us. Yet, we create a proxy history because that’s far more economical. Then we guess fast.

I get it. I don’t see this as lazy, careless, or cruel as much as our solution to having to navigate in the dark.

Making stories up on the fly often seems like our best option.

It’s not — unless things are dire, which is hardly ever the case.

The more I learn about the art of listening without assuming, the more I see how much of a small miracle it is.

Imagine this:

You walk into the hair salon or barbershop to get your hair cut. They seat you with Angie who seems professional at first, but then distracted. You start to wonder. You begin to make your story.

As the two of you figure out how Angie will cut your hair, you notice she keeps looking out the big front window, as if she’s looking for someone or something. Maybe she’s not so professional after all. Maybe she’s distracted. Maybe she’s into shady stuff. Maybe she just broke up with her boyfriend?

Then Angie notices you’re noticing her, so she apologizes.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, “My last customer left here teary-eyed. I was wondering if I could still see her.” Then Angie starts to focus on your split ends.

While she snips away, you wonder why the previous customer left in tears. Was it because of Angie? You know you can’t just assume, but assuming is all you want to do. You try to find a place to land.

You write some decent plotlines in your mind. Angie caused the tears by giving a bad haircut, pulling a sad story from her customer, or saying something upsetting.

It turns out, the customer learned while sitting in the chair she was going to be a first-time grandmother.

So much for assumptions.

And while we’ll write stories about anyone, the main character in our tales is us, and sometimes an unlikeable one at that. We make assumptions about our limitations and paint ourselves as incapable protagonists. These stories are not our finest work.

They say we’re the storytelling animal, and that’s true, but we could improve our craft. Perhaps we could listen without preconceptions and with the benefit of the doubt. Maybe we could write our stories with a little extra grace. We could have doors open more and close less in our stories.

Can you imagine such stories? They’d be nothing short of a revelation.

Hope you're well, friends.