By Katia Del Rivero

Versión en Español

In these days I had the opportunity to talk with a person whom I’ve learned to appreciate very much.

I was exploring with him where did the feeling that he wasn’t well seen in the company came from.

And his answer was really nice: “that’s what I’ve been told, that I’m not part of this administration”.

Exploring a little bit more, he told me a history of his youth. In the system where he is now, the administration in elected every three years. Six years ago, and on behalf of taking care of his place in the system in order to take care of his salary and his family, with amateurism, he considered that he should take part and campaigned.

Six years later, with a different administration and without having the chance to grow because the campaign promises stayed as promises. He doesn’t feel he has a place in the current administration, although in any case his heart is always with the company, he wants to contribute and his only purpose is doing a great job so he can take care of his beloved ones.

When I heard his history, beyond the process he wanted in order to find his good place again, he asked me a lot about the others.

How Come We Are Able to “Freeze” Someone’s Image Based on the Behavior They Had Six Years Earlier?

Michael Blumenstein said that we, human beings, in an attempt of handling the world’s complexity we create simplification mechanisms.

This is not about “good” and “bad” is about basic survival.

When we are in the process of getting to know someone, generally we pay lots of attention and use a lot of our energy.

When we meet someone, usually the process of every new interaction demands our attention, because we don’t know how to react, we don’t have a reference of possible meanings in front of our contributions, so we are in a risky position. What if the other behaves like a fierce lion and tries to eat us?

The thing is after the first interactions we build up a safety state in which we “believe” we know how to react, because we “believe” we know who that person is. And then we place things in “good”, “trustable”, “neurotic”, “dangerous”; “unfaithful”, “compromised”, “irresponsible”, or whatever we’ve build with the behaviors of the first interactions.

This is a life mechanism, once again, it gives us the opportunity of knowing how to react. Because facing those who are “intolerant” I have the “careful” reaction program, and facing those who are “kind” I use the “no problem” reaction program.

What risk does this has? We stop seeing people. We assume what they are and what they are not. And even more, that they can contribute in a different way depending on our adjustment or change to the contribution.

And then we are facing someone who we met in a vulnerability moment and seemed aggressive to us. And if we don’t give ourselves the chance to look at them with new eyes, we’ll never discover this person’s different parts, and above everything it’s unlikely that we want to contribute in a different way to build together.

Therefore, we stay in a safe and unproductive zone for new possibilities.

Maybe the next time you look at someone and thin: “here comes the hateful one”, you contribute with the possibility of “new eye” and then probably life and this other person may surprise you.

And that’s just what happened to the guy in our history, who started generating different contributions. He started behaving with the certainty that his heart is in this system and that he is able of rebuilding and building bridges, bonds, and links to the new purpose.

Today he feels different because he is interacting with those with whom he didn’t before and it seems to be in a full construction of a promising future.

And you? Did you stay on the simplifying program or will you challenge yourself and give yourself the opportunity of building something different?

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