Have you ever heard of a map? It's not that school map, where we studied geographic locations and often made drawings of them. According to neurolinguistics, a map is the perception we have of external information.
What we can do is to know our perceptions of facts that we think is reality. We experience and correspond to the external world, that is, around us, through sensory representation systems.
It is our maps or perceptions of reality that determine our behavior and its meanings. This does not mean that it is real, but that it is our reality at a given moment. Usually it is not reality that encourages, stimulates or encourages us, but our map of reality.
People have different maps because they have different experiences, see this example:
Three strong taps with a closed hand on a table, causes a noise, automatically the human mind will seek a relationship of a memory with this noise and so we have a meaning of the noise through our map or experience. When I hear three knocks on the table, I remember my childhood when my mother knocked under the dinner table, causing a noise and saying: is that Mr Santa Claus? While my little sister's eyes widened and I was building anticipation about Christmas presents. A friend of mine, on the other hand, when he heard the same sound, began to tremble with fear, as he remembered a murder with three shots that took place in front of him, the knocks on the table were similar to the sound of the shots.
Everything for the human mind has a relationship or meaning, all the time we make associations, even if unconscious. The meaning something has for us often has a totally different meaning for someone else. A person who speaks loudly can bother us, simply because my sensory map interprets the loud voice with someone from my past with whom I didn't relate well or brought me suffering. The same person, speaking loudly and aggressively to my map, can play for someone else, a loved one, or an Italian uncle who only knows how to speak loudly. Understand the following, that reality is on each one's map, the fact of speaking loudly does not mean that the person is aggressive, and yes, we are interpreting it that way according to our map. In fact, here's an important tip, did you know that we only see in people what is in us. That's right, it's impossible to recognize something in someone if we never experience it inside us, even if it's just some knowledge about the judged fact.
This doesn't mean you should agree with everything, it's nothing like that, but you can better understand people's behavior, always respecting their mental maps and in this way developing empathy, that is, showing each person how much you understand them. and is willing to help, even if you don't agree.
This is a magical bridge of communication that makes people so different to be able to maintain a healthy and lasting relationship, whether professional or personal.
Today's Exercise:
Spend the day paying attention to people's attitudes towards their behavior towards some common situation. Don't judge anyone, there is no right or wrong, just different points of view. Just try to understand people and what led them to show any sensation. Expand your capacity for understanding, patience and tolerance, be sure that any relationship will be easier and the magic gates of opportunity will open for you. Respect is everything.
