I listened yesterday and was given a new understanding, which I am going to have fun applying. By fun, I mean engaging in even deeper levels of relating to others and myself
My colleagues were having some difficulties with an associate's angry and demanding attitudes. When I shared with my boss yet another employee’s irritation with this person's demeaning tone, he shared a great wisdom with me that he had just realized.
Uncomfortable with his own anger that this person had stirred up in him, he went to meet the person face to face face. His intention was not to confront , but to discover the source of the passion that was riling everyone else up. He saw that the anger arose from a desire to the best job possible. Once he acknow-ledged that he saw this strong desire to get the best possible outcome, the person calmed down and became very respectful to him.
In some ways this was merely the standard practice of active listening. But I think my boss took it to a new level. He wasn’t just listening for a result, so he could assure the person that he/she was being heard. He had and acted on a sincere interest in what motivated the passion . He did more than hear and listen and acknowledge. He looked deeper into a heart & mind, and saw something good and acknowledged that.
Our associate still seems angry and demanding to the rest of us, but the wisdom is this: All passion has within it some form of love. Anger is a passion we typically try to avoid, but instead of resisting it we can become deeply interested in it and thus in the person expressing it, even when it's ourselves.
So this morning I felt myself getting angry with my daughter about her seeming anger over a minor misunderstanding in a conversation. This was my first recognized opportunity to consider what another’s and my own passion was.
I took a mental step back and remembered first that she had risen very early to drive across country, so she was probably a bit sleep deprived, and thus it was easy for her to misunderstand me. Secondly the conversation was about directions to take her child to a destination. So I then saw the base of my daughter’s seeming anger (and it could have just been my perception not her actual passion ) was to get me to understand the directions clearly so that her child would arrive timely and that I would not be frustrated by misdirection. Once I saw her love I had to look at my own passion.
My anger rose out of feeling disrespected rather than loved. That will always charge my emotional engines, because I love and respect myself and know that I don’t deserve, nor will I tolerate, any form of disrespect. But my anger is my defense against anything that I perceive is not love. It doens't bring me love, but bars the door. But by exploring her anger and seeming disrespect I came to understand that it wasn;t really what I initially and reactivley thought it was, but was coming from a place of love for me and for her child. My angry reaction dissolved. Instead of seeing the anger, I saw the love. This one wasn’t really that difficult. I no doubt will get a bigger challenge to test this newfound concept.
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