Stop pointless arguying and try to understand the opposite side also. It's refreshing.

I've been in many discussions with people I think are really smart, but still I've seen them to make totally incorrect conclusions based on facts we both share. And to be fair, I've thought those are totally incorrect conclusions, it could be that I'm making the totally incorrect conclusions.

People reflect anything they see based on their own history with the subject. Everyone have some precausions about all the subjects in the world. Even not knowing anything is a history with the subject, which makes person even more unsecure with the facts they are given. Still in almost all situations, people match the data they receive to their own value map, history of experiences with similar issues.

This all causes disagreements and makes people get angry to each other because of they are not seeing the things the same way they do. Funny thing is that people most often do have valid reasons why they disagree with someone or understand differently things that they do. Most often they are not stupid or just being mean, but they are interpreting thing based on their experience and understanding, and that makes them see things differently.

Here's an example, look at these two photos in this blog post? How do you see those? Where do you think those are from and what actually happening in those photos?

I bet some of you might already have really good guesses about those or you could even actually know what's happening in those? Others might not have any glue and could guess totally wrong. Even though these aren't something to argue about, I hope it still proves my point that your own experience always affects on how you interpret situations.

Once in a while it's really refreshing to really try to understand why someone is seeing things totally differently than you are. Try sometime to go to the other side, and try openmindly understand the reasoning why somebody else is seeing the same thing so other way than you are. If you try this couple of times, I promise it opens you a new world. It helps you to understand much more about people. But it is also really hard, I at least easily get the temptation to start correcting the facts I think are not correct without really trying to understand. Being open minded will give you lot of experience for the future to communicate with people who you want to influence.

In case you are still wondering, the upper picture is from Lahti, from ski jumping tower, where in summers there is outdoor swimming lanes in landing area of the ski jumping hill. The second photo is from WRC rally Finland, where someone left video camera on to the road to get close ups from soon coming WRC rally car. Did you get those right at the first time?

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen