Knowing How To Understand Others Means Knowing How To Respect Them

Knowing how to understand others is the threshold of empathy. It is only when we make the effort to connect with the other to know their reality, their needs and their emotions that we facilitate the genuine respect that coexistence builds. Because those who understand and sympathize with those in front of them feel that this person also deserves consideration and appreciation.

Let’s think about it for a moment. Imagine a world in which humans interact as in an anthill. Each one fulfills a function, each member of the community accomplishes his work without other aspiration and without other motivations. No one cares about the other, there is no understanding and therefore there is also no empathy and those emotions that facilitate attention, care, friendship, l ‘altruism…

Without these processes, humanity as such does not exist. It is true that people are also defined by negative and somewhat conflicting aspects. However, no mental and emotional process is more decisive for our coexistence than knowing how to understand. Moreover, as striking as it may seem to us, few dimensions are as complex as they are difficult to achieve.

Because whoever genuinely understands the other, does it in a very concrete way: free of judgment and full of wills. Let’s understand a little better what this competition of life consists of.

Knowing how to understand others, a pending subject

There are few things that despair us more than not being understood. Since childhood, we have been in contact with this devastating feeling that our parents, siblings, friends or teachers do not understand what we are feeling or what is happening to us. When this happens, we are overcome by this mixture which turns from rage to sadness. This also does not change in adulthood.

Feeling misunderstood is one of the deepest and most painful ailments. Perhaps for this reason, knowing what it means, we should try much more to take care of this skill, to facilitate it for others despite the fact that sometimes some people have disappointed us in the past. However, it must be done well.

As Goethe noted, “people tend to listen only to what they understand”. That’s right, somehow we only connect with those who are most understandable to us, with those who align most with our ideas, values ​​and thoughts. .

Instead, understanding always requires greater effort. In fact, sometimes it involves something really brave. Discover, accept and connect with those who don’t think like me.

Knowing how to understand is not the same as knowing how to hear

To know how to understand others in an authentic way, it is necessary to clarify a detail. Understanding is not the same as listening. In fact, most of the time we are left with the second dimension, which is to say that we only devote ourselves to deciphering what others want to send to us. We are aware of the message and its meaning, but nothing more.

Now understanding involves something deeper. It’s not just about deciphering what they’re telling us, it’s about connecting with the particular reality of the person in front of me through empathy. It goes beyond words to understand needs and feel them. So, one thing to keep in mind is that the process of understanding is both incredibly active and complex.

For this process to be effective, we must apply what in psychology we call theory of mind. This concept is defined as the ability we have to infer the mental states of others, such as their thoughts, fears, desires, intentions, etc. This way we understand why they are doing certain things and even predict future behaviors.

Once we process all of this information, we interpret it in order to act on it. All these mechanisms are integrated into the mental act of knowing how to understand. However, we also cannot ignore the emotional aspect.

Understand without prejudging, connect with empathy

Daniel Goleman also often speaks to us in his books about the need to know how to understand others. It’s not just about inferring what the person in front of me is thinking or feeling. It is not enough to be aware of what you are thinking or whether what you are feeling is fear or sadness.

Genuine understanding will never be possible if there is neither will nor interest. Theory of mind and emotional intelligence are therefore useless if my head is elsewhere talking to my partner. In addition to this will, this active feeling to open up to the other and understand what he says and happens to him, other dimensions are also necessary:

• Active Listening: You need to be receptive to others without more intention or purpose. It is not enough for us to listen while we think about what to answer

• Another fundamental factor is to listen without prejudging: knowing how to understand is to connect to the reality of the other without previous thoughts, judgments, prejudices, previous labels

To conclude, as one can see, the process which articulates the concept of comprehension is more complex than one might think. Despite this, we are all capable of putting it into practice; willpower, in most cases, is essential.

Our thoughts

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