How to Change How You Feel
– Monday Mindset –

Today’s Monday Mindset: Seek to Understand

I was supporting someone the other day and they were frustrated with somebody else and they wanted to tell them all the reasons they were frustrated and how this other person had screwed up.

And I said, “Just time out before you do that. What if you were to flip it and seek to understand first? Why don’t you find out what their perspective was, what they were thinking?”

They heard me out and they decided to do it.

Lo and behold, when they chose to seek to understand and they heard the other person’s perspective, they realized that their perspective that they had was actually really skewed. They were so glad they didn’t just go and vent and get frustrated with them because that wouldn’t have gone well.

Here’s my challenge to you. Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

And I say that, but it’s actually really hard to do.

I find it hard to do because I want people to understand me first, and so I have to catch myself…

“What’s up, time out.”

Seek to understand first the next time you have a difficult or challenging situation with somebody else. Don’t try and be understood. Instead, seek to understand.

When you seek to understand, it makes it way easier for somebody else to then want to understand you. But if you just want to be understood, you’re likely to have people be defensive and deflective because they want to be understood.

So if you just put the other person first, seek to understand, who knows what you might discover and how it might change your perspective. You’ll be glad you did, I promise you that.

So seek to understand.

That’s my challenge. That’s your Monday Mindset.