The Care Aware Index is meant to focus your thoughts about other people in ways that can easily be expressed as feedback to start valuable dialogues. It might seem ideal to apply these assessments to everyone you meet, but that’s probably not a good place to start. Our schedules won’t allow it and the human brain may not have that much processing power. And even once we can augment our mental abilities technologically, do we want to assess everyone we see on the street? It is possible to care too much and we’ll discuss that later.
It’s tempting to think that the first people we should assess are our friends and family. Aren’t your odds of success better with people you are comfortable around? And certainly these folks deserve feedback. Part of the reason you have a good relationship with them is because you are already giving them positive feedback. I would avoid assessing them for now. Although this interdependence expanding concept probably strikes you as brilliant and revolutionary, the Care/Aware Index may turn out to be a terrible idea and I would hate for it to ruin any friendships or family relations.
Assess yourself first. Be tough, but fair, and think of it as a rough draft. If you think people can and do change through the course of life, then your self-assessment will change too. You may want to share your assessment with friends and family immediately to see if they agree. If you assess yourself as one with a high level of care about others, you won’t put them in that position. Just because you think you have a great relationship with someone doesn’t mean you actually do, it might be that your awareness is low but you need outside feedback to realize it. I am working on a way to share this information with others anonymously at first. Knowing if anyone, not necessarily who, agrees with your assessment is valuable feedback.
Watch for my self-assessment in the near future. I’m trying to figure out how to describe “cares so much about others that he is slow on following through on ideas.”
After assessing yourself, start judging people you interact with once a week or more, but don’t know well. Focus especially on people who inspire a slight distrust or you call a negative name to yourself or friends. Think of people who make you feel awkward or uncomfortable; interactions with them are where misunderstandings happen and cooperation is less likely. A Care/Aware Assessment should reveal the source of distrust and if it is valid. I am optimistic that in many cases you will find it is not, or at least what needs to be done to fix the situation.
Also, focus on people you don’t like. Hopefully that’s a small group. It is for me (in fact, I’m hard pressed to think of someone I actively dislike, but there are plenty of people I avoid or distance myself from because something about them bugs me). Think of people you’ve had disputes with, share an unhealthy rivalry with, or as if often the case, have different values (or think you do). Observe them as closely as possible without stalking or electronically eavesdropping. Look at how they interact with you and others with an eye for how aware they seem, and how much they appear to care. My algorithm for this is a work in progress still, but I’m ready to share it. Watch for it in my next post. You may learn as much about yourself as them.