Episode 43: Meet People Where They Are

[00:00:00] I really dislike the word should. It's this incredible word that we use to describe not what a person is going to do, but what they are going to do if they're adhering to our perception of what is correct or right. When referring to myself, there are lots of things that I should do because I have values and a moral compass that my shoulds are based on.

Where I struggle is when I find myself or others insisting so strongly that our version of [00:00:30] should

There's a kind of comfort in talking about how things should have been done, probably because when we complain about how things should be, we elevate ourselves to a kind of superiority over the person that should have been doing something. I have very strong opinions on what people should be doing in their lives because I'm a human with a functioning brain and I think all kinds of things about how others should [00:01:00] be living their lives.

Thank you. In fact, my opinions are so strong that I decided to start a podcast where I can promote those ideas. But even though I have strong opinions that may very well be better suited toward helping a person live a better life, it does not mean that I should expect everyone to share those ideas.

I've often seen people That almost seem to take personal offense when someone else doesn't do something according to how they think things [00:01:30] should be done. Few things are more impractical in this day and age than holding the assumption that we all share the same worldview about how things should be done.

For my work, my company primarily finds buried utility lines that people are looking for. And just about every person that I work with has an opinion on where those lines should be. When my company finds that those lines are actually somewhere else, these people almost always have an [00:02:00] opinion on how the person that installed the line in the first place Should have installed it and somehow they find it worth their time to complain about how somebody did a thing Years ago that they have absolutely no context for most of us are just trying to make the best of life With what we know and we often fail But there's so much going on behind the scenes that another person's simplistic view of our life can be a burden [00:02:30] There's nothing wrong with having opinions or beliefs about how people should do things You But there is a problem when we let ourselves get frustrated when someone doesn't follow the same shoulds that we do.

We need to meet people where they stand today, and not where we think they should be standing. Besides, if you have any hope of getting a person to think the same way as you, then you'll be far better off holding them to expectations.

[00:03:00] Sometimes you can berate or lecture a person long enough that they may try to appease you for the sake of peace, or simply just to get out of the conversation, but if that's the tactic that you're using, you'll never truly win these people over. On occasion, I find that people like to talk to me about things going on in their lives, and I [00:03:30] usually try to offer some kind of advice if I have any.

More often than not, I found that most of the time they don't really seem to want the advice I offer, but they still want to talk about it. What I realized is that when people come to talk to you about their problems, most of the time they don't really want you to give them the answer. They want you to help them find it themselves.

So now, when I'm aware enough to remember to do it, I try to ask questions that would guide them [00:04:00] to the answer that I think would solve their problems. Nobody really wants our judgment or even our solutions. They want us to help them make their own judgments and find their own solutions. They want us to meet them where they are.

I remember being a child and having my parents get frustrated when I couldn't grasp some simple homework problem that they thought should have been easy for me. I can also recall a few occasions when My dad would go out of his way to try [00:04:30] to teach me some skill or about some interest of his, but then get upset when I wasn't grasping the concept or succeeding at the skill that he was trying to teach me.

What I did learn was that I hated school, and that I didn't like any of the same things as my dad. In all fairness, I'm I also get frustrated sometimes with my own kids when they aren't grasping the concepts that are painfully obvious to me. But I know for a fact that whenever someone got [00:05:00] frustrated teaching me a thing that in their mind should have been simple, it only ever made me less interested in trying to learn it.

I'm grateful. I'm grateful. That I had people trying to teach me things, especially a father, because I know a lot of people probably wish they had someone so intent on teaching them a thing and so invested that they would actually get upset if they weren't succeeding. But my point here is simply that when we get upset over something, we think a person should know.

Or should [00:05:30] believe or think. It's a lot like getting mad at the rock that you stubbed your toe on. No matter how much we think a person should know a thing or think a thing, it's never going to change how much they know a thing or whether or not they share your belief. I personally believe that people should stop stealing from one another.

Now, I could go to a prison and lecture the inmates on that opinion of mine, but I don't know that that would [00:06:00] even be of any use. People and their weird ways are such complicated messes sometimes. It may seem painfully obvious to us how a person is making their own life miserable, but there's always a reason people do things.

A person doesn't go and cheat on a spouse because they weren't thinking. They go and cheat on their spouse because they were thinking. What they were thinking may have been short sighted, stupid, selfish, or spiteful, but they [00:06:30] were definitely doing it for a reason. If we're talking about a person that you are totally uninvested in, then maybe it's just easier to say that they were stupid or evil or ignorant.

But if we hope to help whoever this is, it's usually better to stop moralizing their actions and just try to figure out what is going on behind the curtains of their mind. Accepting that a person is where they currently are will free you from the need to judge their actions [00:07:00] and give you the capacity to see them more clearly.

And maybe to actually help them. I don't know that I would mind if we just collectively decided to drop the word should from our vocabulary. Just like the fact that water freezes at 32 degrees and gravity pulls things down, people are where they are. And maybe it's time for us to set our shoulds aside and meet them there.