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How to Deal with an Undesirable Person
This little procedure takes just a few minutes, and can change your situation
with your family, neighbors, team, your boss, your worst customer, in
spectacular ways. It is not necessary to do this thing exactly 'right.' If you
mix up a step or have something out of position, it is likely to work well
anyway.
1. If your most vivid memories of this undesirable person involve sitting,
arrange three empty chairs approximately as shown. If it was a standing
situation, chairs are not needed.
2. Sit in chair A. Try to imagine your undesirable person sitting in chair B.
With the parts of you that can do it, move yourself into your co-worker in chair
B, and see the world through the other person's eyes, hear the world through
this person's ears, and so on. For the next few minutes, you are this other
person.
3. As that other person, you are looking at yourself in chair A. What do you
see? What do you hear? What do you feel about the person in chair A? What do you
think about that person in chair A?
4. Whenever you are ready, get up, and do something to break your state. Spell a
word backward, walk in a circle, just anything to free your mind for a moment.
5. Sit in chair C and become an independent observer. You are not yourself or
the other person. As the observer, what do you see, hear, think, feel about the
interaction between yourself in chair A, and the person in B?
5a. Try imagining that your chair is very far removed from chairs A and B, and
see if anything changes. How about if your chair becomes very close?
6. Break your state. Sit again in chair A, be yourself, and notice if anything
has changed in your thoughts about the other person.
7. As necessary, feel free to repeat the steps of this procedure.
Along the same lines, you might like to find out about:
Creative Listening
The 32-to-1 Criticism Ratio
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