Quality chats: "listen to people as possibilities"

I'm so grateful to have two very authentic housemates. Derong moved in last July and YeeTing moved in just last month. The interesting thing is that they both have done the Landmark forum because I introduced them to it. And now they discover their blindspots in everyday life, sometimes help me discover mine, and we have such high quality sharings on a daily basis.

Since Derong moved in, we have been very good friend and in the past couple of weeks we worked together to revive the UWA Table tennis club. It was all good, we discussed and bounced ideas and set up stall on O-Day, got sunburnt together... But recently the discussion become kind of dry and it felt more like a burden than fun when it comes to TTClub matters.

We had one session working out the budget and bookings tonight and we eventually figured out the optimal solution. But there wasn't much fun in the process. Then Derong started exploring with me why the organising of it become un-fun.

I felt slightly uneasy for a split second but then I welcomed the exploration because I knew there's something unsaid about the relationship when it comes to TTClub matters and it is not very healthy. So we started sharing authentically about how we felt and what was going on.

I realised that I've been acting like more of a guiding master to the whole thing instead of actually having discussion with him, and I felt he is not well-organised sometimes and kept dwelling on that point to make him more organised.

He also realised that he has been focusing on some negative part of his other friends and loses touch with the real essence of the persons. And that reflects exactly like what I'm doing to him.

I then recalled how I admired him when we just knew each other for 2 month or so, while he was telling me about his amazing experiences in his highschool time. And how different I look at him (as not-too-well-organised) when we're in the recent TTClub matters. It was a shame!

One thing I learnt from Landmark coaching sparked into my mind:

You shall only listen to them as possibilities and nothing but possibilites.

I remember my coach did that to me, she would not take any complaint or winge I gave her, she only listens to me as "I can, just need to work it out". And it is a very powerful listening!!

And that is the key to this issue we had there. I stop listening to Derong as possibilities. What he is possible in my subconscious mind has shrunk a lot and I treated him as that, no wonder he felt like crap!

Now that I know what I did (which I'm not proud of at all), I can tune back to the original admiring view I have of him. And that just make discussion so much more enjoyable. He is able to contribute a lot more, and when he's loose on any part of organisation, I can remind him, but not condemn him as I subconsciously had been doing.

And I can say that this kind of subconscious negative view of people are very common especially with people very close in life. We would have a condemning tone when this person does something AGAIN! And we would not put this kind of tone to any other people. It could be just one small mistake, we would simply (not even thinking) remind the person with a condemning tone. A lot of time the tone is subconscious, all we want to do is to remind, but because of this negative image we have on this particular area for this person, we would express it quite differently.

Catching it and dissolving it, life is so much better.
I recommend the Landmark Forum to you. Yes, again! Now even more unreserved.