Newsletter April 2009

What colours do you see?

When we encounter various aspects of life, it’s often akin to looking at a beach ball. People look at the same thing, yet see something different because they view it from a different angle.

Some may see red, yellow and blue stripes while others see green, orange and white stripes. None are ‘wrong’ they are just seeing it from their own perspective.

Once we are aware of this it can help us in two ways:
1. Understanding others

We can appreciate other people’s point of view and see why they do and say the things they do. This can lead to greater understanding and tolerance.
For example I worked with a woman who arrived every day dressed as if she were about to go to a formal function.

“Why does she dress like that?” hissed a female colleague “Why can’t she dress like the rest of us? Does she think she’s better than everyone else?”

I asked the woman about her choice of clothing. It turns out she had been married to a man who had treated her badly. It had knocked her confidence and she felt inferior to her work colleagues. The only way she could feel ‘worthy’ of working alongside them was to dress as well as she could.  She in no way felt any better than the others. Quite the opposite in fact.

2. Expanding our choices

It can help us to look at things from more than one angle and therefore widen our viewpoint and provide us with helpful options and more choices.
If a situation occurs where all you can see is a negative aspect, picture it as a beach ball and see how many other aspects you can find. Ask other people their views. Perhaps think about a person you respect who has a completely different lifestyle to yours, eg a media celebrity, a businessperson, a politician, and imagine how they would approach it. To have got to where they have got, they must have in some way have a different viewpoint to you.
Let’s say you have to give a presentation to a large group of people, or walk into a room full of strangers for a networking event.Many people will see these as nerve-racking situations.

But how else could you look at them?

Some people would go to the presentation thinking “What a great opportunity to pass on my message to all these people” or “How wonderful, I have 30 minutes of people’s undivided attention to share something I feel passionate about” or at the networking event “Here is a chance to meet a couple of new people and have a nice chat with them.”
Issues in life aren’t only the red, yellow and blue stripes, they are usually much more colourful than that.

Make sure you see other sides of the beach ball and then choose how you would like to view it.