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One way I can improve as a person

When I pass someone on the sidewalk or hallway, I always try to make eye contact, smile, and even say hello. Unless they are in obvious distress, and then I pull on a supportive frown. Being open and friendly is probably a by product of my rural upbringing. When a car came down our gravel road as a kid, if I was outside I would immediately start getting into position to look up and wave. And now if I anyone else initiates a greeting, I certainly reciprocate, sometimes even agonizing over whether my response was sufficiently warm or sincere.

So why is it when I get an email, even from a person I know, I’ll sometimes read and just think about the response but never send it? In our digital age, isn’t that the same thing as ignoring a hello? I have been frustrated by slow replies and discouraged by those that never came. Yet I do the same to others (in fact, am probably doing right now).

I’d like to think the reason I always return a smile or hello is out of genuine warmth and interest in other people, but maybe it is just out of fear. Fear that a testy character might get offended and attack me? Sure, maybe a little. But more fear of a larger pain. That I would have to endure the look of pain on someone else’s face and know I caused it. Worrying about others’ pain is surely proof of my genuine warmth and interest, isn’t it?

Is it because I think people on the other side of an internet connection don’t have feelings? Or that I’ll never see them? No, I’m so aware they have feelings that the next time I see them, I’ll immediately remember that un-responded to email. I’ll gush with apologies, and then change the whole direction of the conversation because of it, probably for the worse.

This is mostly just because of my procrastination. I tell myself I’ll do it later, after I finish this other more pressing task. Or, there’s always this very tempting rationalization – ‘this deserves a response that I can only give with some more information and time to think’. And then I don’t get the information, or the time just keeps expanding…

If I am serious about eliminating this personal flaw, maybe I should I start to visualize email senders as people I’m passing in the hall. If they said hello, would I ponder whether to say hi, or hello, or how you doing back to them, and in the meantime just walk past, thinking that I’ll just respond next time? Absolutely not! So I can at least reply to email passersby with a ‘Thanks’, or ‘Let me think about that’.

Uh oh. I’m already pre worrying about how some might view canned replies. So I put a little more thought into my pre planned response. Here it is:

” Hi, I don’t have a more specific reply right now because I need more time to think about it. I don’t want to mislead you – my eventual response may be brief, even negative. If I want to continue building our relationship I want to do it right, but if I want to sever our contact, I will be as diplomatic as possible. If we know each other well there should be no surprises here, but I hope for some I am at least making the wait a bit more interesting. Please know that I cared enough about your message, even before you sent it, to compose this frank and heartfelt acknowledgement. The fact that other people may receive this exact message shouldn’t diminish our personal connection, but instead make your connection with others stronger.”

Now I just need to get with some programmers to figure out how to make a reminder system so that every time I send this message I get some kind of reminder to eventually follow up. There probably already is one, I’ve just procrastinated in finding it.

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Making Mindful Mistakes

 

Have you ever made a mistake so stupid that you wished you had a brain disorder or disease to blame it on instead of well, you? I did just the other day. But for the record, writing this post has been quite therapeutic and I in no way wish for any sort of brain disease or disorder.

I was leaving Panera Bread. My water cup was empty except for a few ice cubes, so I veered toward the waste and recycle cabinet. A busy employee blocked the front of it, so I leaned over from the side to drop the cup in the hole marked for plastics. As soon as my fingers released their grip I realized that the staff member was changing out the bag for the waste container that normally rests beneath that hole. And then, Ka Boom! The water cup, filled with ice, hit the ground at the same time as my sense of self.

I apologized immediately, but it probably seemed like an automatic, reflex gesture. The fellow said something along the lines of – That’s okay. It happens. Or, that’s not the first time. I can’t remember what he actually said because I was so mortified, but I hope it was the latter. Knowing others had done it too would make me feel better, even though it should make me feel even worse, since it would mean this poor fellow would have had to endure even more misfortune.  I left the restaurant, but that incident obviously hasn’t left me.

Okay, so I exaggerated the seriousness of the mistake I made. But it sent shock waves of embarrassment through me. Had I been more present in the moment, I would have seen what the fellow was doing and asked where he wanted me to place my cup. Instead, I was lost in my own world of thoughts.

Does being present in the moment mean giving up this inner life in favor of closer attention to my surroundings? I love my inner world. It’s where I explore ideas and places I’ve never been. Tell myself stories and figure all sorts of things out. It’s what allows me to feel so superior to people who claim to get bored easily because I suspect they don’t have one. Anyway, I don’t want to reign in my inner world. But I would like to better merge the inventive playfulness and thoughtful consideration of that interior life with my surroundings.

With that state of mind I would might have still made a similar mistake, but maybe I would have reacted better.

If I were appropriately present in my inner world, I would control my body language to convey remorse, yet display a rugged constitution able to withstand criticism. When someone breaks down over a mistake, sure, they’ve showed their regret, but they’ve also spilled a whole lot of feelings for someone to clean up. I would think about how my action affected everyone involved, and make sure that by spending some time fixing this problem that I didn’t worsen another one down the line. Like if I had just been called home about an emergency, or was blocking the line so other people couldn’t throw their stuff away too.

I would look at the employee and all the patrons staring at me and say, “At first I thought my embarrassment is punishment enough for this mistake. Especially since I’m so humiliated I know I’ll never do this again. But, this shouldn’t be about me, but about how to help you. Will you get you in trouble if I clean this up?”

So while being apologetic and willing to clean my own mess, I am also mindful of the business’s commitment to customer service and comfort. If we all gave just the right amount of attention to our mistakes, peoples’ responses to them would change over time as well. In such a world, the employee might reply along these lines.

“Your actions were a classic example of cognitive tunneling. We try to create a pleasurable stimulating atmosphere and you’re a repeat customer because of it. It’s only natural for you to get lost in your own thoughts and not notice a subtle changes in environment. I should have put up a warning sign of some sort around the hole to prevent you from this experience.”

I want to apologize to this Panera worker whose job I made harder that day. I’m sorry for adding to your workload. And I’m especially sorry if I reduced you faith in the overall progress of man with my mindless stupidity.

I would also suggest that we use our mistakes to examine how we affect others. There’s a mental balancing act for us to exercise here. Too little embarrassment, and maybe we don’t try hard enough to avoid mistakes in the first place. Too much embarrassment, and our brain freezes up and we don’t learn anything. The effort spent on this balancing might lead us to that perfect mental state I mentioned earlier, where we integrate impressions of our surroundings into our inner world, without being lost in either. Then we will be free to make new and more interesting mistakes.

But don’t worry, we won’t stop making mistakes. We would have to have perfect information and decision-making abilities to do that, and when by the time that happens we will have finally invented an AI system capable of exterminating us. Now that might be an interesting mistake.

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Where I’ve been; Where I’m going

Now that I’ve been writing this blog for about eighteen months, it’s a good time to review my progress. One year later would have been better, but like everything else with this project, I’m way behind.

I have grand ambitions for Participastory. In it, I write about negative, unpleasant, and awkward interactions. They fascinate me for a couple reasons. For one I am often surprised by how awkward I can still feel after all these years of living in society. But I am also intrigued by how blind we can be to our own lack of awareness. People can have a bad interaction and half the participants don’t know anything went wrong. Or maybe all the participants are frustrated and dislike each other, yet perceives themselves as always happy and easy to get along with. And situations like this occur among individuals who can do amazing math problems, make medical breakthroughs, or write award winning love poems. Understanding and treating each other better shouldn’t be too complicated, but both continue to elude us. That makes it a tantalizing problem to solve, with bonus emotional features of being both funny and sad. What a great ongoing topic for a blog, right?

Over time, if enough people read and contribute on this subject, we may figure out how to practice better ways of interacting. We already practice how to escape burning buildings without getting hurt, so why not practice much more commonly needed skills like de-escalating angry situations, or being honest without being a dick, or having tough conversations? I envision Participastory to be a double value – high quality, fresh entertainment and a very practical effort to help humankind.

What have I accomplished? I’ve written about thirteen posts that no one has seen except some spammers trolling for fresh website meat. And they probably didn’t read any of it or it would have changed their whole worldview enough to dissuade them from sending me their spammy internet links. So what happened?

Well, like everyone else, I’m busy. I treasure time with my wife, family, and friends. I have a full time job and have been rewriting my latest novel, Forgive and Take (don’t worry, you’ll hear plenty more about it later). And I vastly underestimated how much time it would take to write three stellar blog posts a week, which was my original goal.

So, specific to this project, my first problem is similar to one that afflicts many interactions – I was so consumed with impressing readers that I put too much pressure on myself. Not that I think some posts can suck or just be mediocre. There’s plenty to read out there and I don’t want to write just to be “producing content”. But trying to include a deep insight into human nature and an interest-grabbing improvement for interactions all with a hilarious tone in each essay – that’s more time consuming than I expected. Unfortunately I underestimate how long most projects will take. I thought that I would have solved my problem of underestimating project times by now, but, you guessed it, I underestimated how long that would take.

Rethinking my first vision for the site also caused delays. Originally I thought my posts would focus almost entirely on issues of people giving each other feedback.  I would suggest ways that the Ware a Care Index might improve shortfalls in our verbal and nonverbal communication. But around this time I started thinking Participastory might make more sense to people as an advice column.  Not that I have a lot of answers, but I do get along well with most people and might be able to reframe old problems in new ways. And I thought an advice column might spark more interaction, which I needed to mobilize practice interactions. And that led me to think – what if Participastory could illuminate ways for readers to change their own mental states? In other words to snap out of anger, anxiety, or agitation, or increase energy or motivation. Isn’t that the ultimate form of participation? I couldn’t decide what to write about next.

So in these eighteen months I’ve gone from thinking about examining how we give each other feedback to suggesting new ways to how to control your own mental state. Actually, those pursuits are related, but trying to make that connection with each post is difficult. And here lies my biggest self-made obstacle – I have attempted to make each post directly and obviously connected to last one and all that preceded it.

Starting now I am going to take some smaller steps. At first I will focus on how people learn about each other. I’ll try to avoid common, boring ways people pick up information, like reading resumes or asking dull questions, and instead focus on body language, snap judgments, gossip, and awkward staring. I hope to explore some ways we might improve upon that.    In my last few posts, for example,  I’ve focused on how people see what others are looking at on their phones and laptops.

Most importantly, I am not necessarily going to keep these posts in order. I may write about how we learn about each other one day, and the next about efforts to impress each other. But the topic will somehow revolve around how people affect one another,  all based around the belief that people are interdependent. If we want to succeed and thrive in an interdependent environment, we need to approach the majority of interactions with others with a mind to find mutually satisfying outcomes.

Here are just a few of the areas I may write about over the next few years:

People that make you wish we weren’t interdependent.

How to tell certain people that if they want to be funny they’ll need special training.

How to forge a unique, individual point of view while agreeing with everyone around you.

How to establish social boundaries without a psychological surveyor.

And so on… Thanks for reading. Hope to see you back sometime.

 

 

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Visual Eavesdroppings

One person’s attention can create a powerful affect on its recipient. Parents’ attention on their children shows love, lack of it, neglect. Our attention is finite, and most of us have less than we want to admit. We should use it wisely. Sometimes, though, it goes astray.

When someone starts composing or reading email on an open laptop near you, do your eyes ever drift over and start reading it? If we read an email like that, without explicit permission, that is screenlifting, the ugly cousin of hacking. Never mind that when you Google “screenlifting” you find images for tools to physically lift screens; I think it fits well in this context and I hope to see it used this way more often. And this form of visual eavesdropping isn’t limited to laptops; in fact reading others’ text messages in line at Chipotle or on the bus or subway might be even more common.

While hacked emails make headlines almost every day, we don’t hear much about screenlifting. Perhaps we don’t talk about it because we don’t think it is a problem. You never hear about important secrets being exposed because someone didn’t cover her laptop screen at Starbucks. But maybe it’s something deeper than that. Perhaps we don’t talk about it because we all do it in some way and therefore think it’s no big deal.

Not matter the reason, discussion of screenlifting may provoke some thorny emotions and thoughts about how we give attention and get it from others. We all see things about people that they aren’t necessarily aware of. Sometimes we stumble on situations or views of them before we can turn away, and sometimes we look for it. What we do with that tells us a lot about ourselves.

Here’s an example: you’re in a meeting at work, or next to someone at a crowded coffee shop. Something in the email on the screen next to you catches your attention and instantly an ethics algorithm runs itself in your brain. I’m not going to do anything harmful with this information, the person must not be too concerned about or he wouldn’t be writing it here, by knowing what’s in it I can possibly help this person…All these rationalizations grant permission to read the screen, or possibly make you feel okay about it having read it after the fact. Activity in your brain happens really fast. Suddenly you have about four or five sentences worth of information about the person next to you they don’t know you have. What do you do now?

In future posts I will explore what to do if the information is dangerous, or how to deal with people who deliberately seek to harm others. But for now let’s say you read it just because you find other people interesting and by seeing writing styles you can learn about how they think. You’ve just gained some insight into the person beside you. Should you let them know?

You might say: Excuse me, I just wanted to let you know I read your email and found it quite interesting. You have a lot of stuff going on in your life right now but seem to be handling it really well. And oh, the way you phrased that second sentence was pretty awkward. I had to read twice to get the meaning. I’d re-write that one.

Maybe the author would be grateful. She might even be flattered by your interest and glad that you had the courage to let her know your thoughts.

But those of us living on Planet Earth know this scenario is quite unlikely. Instead, you would be hesitant to share what you know for fear of being thought creepy or weird. And even if the author were an open and trusting person, she would most likely regard your revelation with suspicion and fear. And that’s the way it should be, right?

People get small amounts of information about others all the time, from a bit of gossip, a certain look, or behavior in a situation. Do we feel we need to inform others about everything we know of them? Common sense says we should not, if for no other reason than lack of time. But let’s use this weird little example to consider how much we notice about others. We should be interested in each other. When you interact with someone else, you are that person’s business. Yet, we usually want a signal that it is okay to get to know someone. For many, though, the drive to send such a signal is overwhelmed by the acute risk of rejection or concern about self-promotion.

What would society be like if most people were like this well intentioned screenlifter and grateful emailer? Where we were genuinely interested in each other, and if we realized we crossed some kind of boundary we disclosed it? If our first reaction to any slight transgression was forgiveness and understanding? Would you want to live in a society like that?

Even if you say yes, do you think you could truly feel at ease in such an open and trusting environment? Can you simultaneously let your guard down enough to trust others, while making sure to avoid sending easily misinterpreted signals? Being trusting and forgiving of others and yourself might lull some into relaxing their vigilance over self-control and improvement. But that only leads to personal dissatisfaction while giving ammo to critics of the open and trusting approach.

I am not suggesting we all start looking at each others’ screens. It’s just my lighthearted attempt to provoke thought about how we look at each other. But I do think we should welcome the curiosity of others just as we try to cultivate genuine interest in those around us. And when you encounter information about someone, try to think about it consciously, at least a little. How does what you just learned about the person affect you? Does it make you like her more or less? Does it make you think they are smarter or less intelligent? Odds are that impression will affect how you treat that person. And if we measure character by traits like kindness, honesty, and loyalty, how you manage that information may shape the kind of person you are.

 

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Applying the Ware Care Continuum Part 2: Care

The previous post provided a basic template for evaluating a person’s awareness. Accurately judging how much a person cares about other people is more difficult. A history of often getting it wrong, sometimes with very painful consequences, has given the judging process a bad name. It’s easy to be wrong. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. After all, knowing how much a person cares about others is important. Some might say the most important thing.

So how do we do it? First we must establish what care means. You can care about another person in many ways, not all good. For practitioners of the Ware Care Continuum, caring shall be considered as wanting the best for another person, even if you don’t wish to be part of that person’s life. A better definition is that caring means seeking mutually satisfactory outcomes. This only works, though, if both sides have some knowledge of what the other wants. In other words, they must have some awareness of each other. And to evaluate another’s level of care, you must need to know how much that person is aware.

For an example, let’s evaluate the care level of someone you watch interact with another person. How a person treats someone else should have a strong affect on you, even though they are not doing something directly to you. Imagine seeing someone spit in another person’s face. It’s tempting to think that the spitter doesn’t care about the spittee. Or that she cares very much about that person and wants to inflict humiliation and indignity. Since humiliation clashes with a mutually satisfaction (except in certain sado masochistic relationships), that kind of powerful caring is considered low- care.

But, what if the spitter perceived a wound on the recipient’s face, and, with no first aid kit available, and having just learned that there are antibacterial properties in saliva, thought she was doing the right thing for the person? This knowledge changes the care assessment. Would licking the wound be the more caring response? Perhaps, but again, it is possible the spitter was aware of the wounded person’s aversion to tongue contact or some other overall need for personal space.

Okay, so this is an extreme example, but one that illustrates how easy it is to misunderstand another’s level of care. A more common instance might be a man ignoring his child’s cries. It may appear that he doesn’t care, but what if he is trying to teach the child to self soothe?

So, what does an actual low care status look like? A hearing, fully capable person, who walks past someone in obvious distress without stopping is an obvious example. But it is probably less common, and might not be so useful. How about this – a person who appears to be listening to another individual express a point of view, but who just smiles, nods his head, and walks off. That would be a sign of not caring about the other person’s issue.   We will continue to look for other examples, and post them here to aid in developing this process. Your help puts the “participate” in participastory.

The easiest way to assess if a person cares is to determine if they have the ability to do something, fix a problem, make a change, and yet fail to act on it. The affect we have on others often starts with how we care for ourselves. If you see a person with poor personal hygiene who also has obvious material advantages such as a nice home, car, job, it may seem obvious the person doesn’t care about his appearance. While this person may be a slob, before quickly assuming he is a low care, remember that our assessments are about interactions with others, not an individual’s personal habits. But this example begins with basic actions and expressions of existence. If he smells bad, and his body odors creep into your nostrils, that does reflect a lack of caring about the experience of others near him. Even if there is an allergy to deodorant, the person might use some sort of oil or scent to mitigate the smell. Similar examples can be made of those who don’t try to control anxiety, fear, or anger. These emotions directly affect other people. Anxiety can be as infectious as the flu. But how do you know if someone’s anxiety is controllable or run amok by abnormal neurochemical balances?

Making these assessments will be complicated. Difficulty in figuring others out may be one of the main reasons people give up and decide they don’t care. Indifference is easier than the difficult work of properly assessing others.

Staying in the same subject as hygiene, just because a person is very clean, does not mean that he cares about others. He might conceal his body odor due to fear of embarrassment and vanity. However, everyone who doesn’t have to smell him will probably be grateful, whatever the motivation. So how do you evaluate people who commit thoughtful, considerate acts for others, but don’t really care about them? Those who help others only to advance themselves socially or position themselves to exploit others? We will explore these questions and more going forward. One goal of practicing the Ware Care Continuum, though, is to understand and read people better. But in order for that to happen, we must do more than just think their assessments, we must share them.

Feedback is only useful if you share it. Please feel free to share feedback with me about this blog below.

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Where to Start

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 Continue reading “Where to Start”