How to truly put yourself in other’s shoes
They are three things about relationship; first is understanding, second is sharing and third is space. In this article, we will focus mainly on “understanding” how to become an understanding person to have good relationship with others. Understanding means being able to know what other people think, see from their perspective and most importantly, able to understand people also have their own problem, however most people don’t understand this because their mind is not clear. If we compare the mind to a glass of water, and the water is murky or clouded, you will not be able to see anything inside. You can also compare it to wearing dirty glasses, you won’t be able to see actual world or its true nature, what you see is being distorted that is how we misunderstand.
Misunderstanding is the cause for many broken relationship. SO, what we can do to have better understanding? What we can do is clear the mind, if the mind is clear you will be able to understand that everyone have their own problem. One strange thing we usually think, our problem is the biggest one in the world. Why? Because the problem is closer to your mind, it is closer to you.
To make it clear, let’s take a look at this situation. Suppose one day you go for a walk in a public park and, accidentally, you get cut by a small sharp twig making a tiny wound and you bleed. So you try to stop the bleeding but it wouldn’t. At that point, you feel worried. You ask people for help but no one helps you. You become desperate and upset, thinking why nobody is helping me even though I am bleeding. Since you are bleeding from your arm you focused more on that tiny wound. The problem that is close to us is the big problem from our perspective. An object closer to you, looks much bigger than an object far away. For example, the sun is very big but because the sun is so far, we only see the sun as a small ball in the sky. No matter how far or near the problem is, it will be the same. when the problem is very close to us it looks so big that we want to get it out right away we don’t want the problem to stay with us, and make us unhappy, but we forget that everyone is fighting their own battle, everyone have their own problems. Sometimes the people might be facing bigger problems than ours but we forget to considerate them because our mind is not clear.
When our mind is not clear we won’t be able to think it through and trust our self. How could you trust yourself when you are blindfolded or wearing dirty glasses? You don’t have 100% visibility but when you have clean glasses with clean visibility or when the water is clear everything can easily be seen and then you can put yourself in other people’s shoes. Understanding is one of the important factor for having a healthy relationship. If our mind is not clear, we cannot put our self in other’s shoes then it’s impossible to understand them.
Many researches proved, couples and friends who meditate a lot or meditate together their relationship usually last longer and smoother with less conflict because of having better understanding toward others.