Why Don't You Understand?

Suppose you've been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to you.

"Put these on," he says. "I've worn this pair of glasses for ten years now and they've really helped me. I have an extra pair at home; you can wear these."

So you put them on, but it only makes the problem worse.

"This is terrible!" you exclaim. "I can't see a thing!"

"Well, what's wrong?" he asks. "They work great for me. Try harder."

"I am trying," you insist. "Everything is a blur."

"Well, what's the matter with you? Think positively."

"OK. I positively can't see a thing."

"Boy, are you ungrateful!" he chides. "And after all I've done to help you!"

---------- p.236, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ----------

Every time I reviewed my life, I always considered this book as the bible of my life, which guided me no matter when I was up, or down. Nevertheless, we usually forget the precious lessons of what we've learnt before. We sometimes make mistakes that if we got a chance to look back, we would simply expressed, "Oh! I was young and stupid!" Or "Oh! I was just stupid!"

According to Covey, if we really want to have a truly effective communication with others, we should first seek to understand before being understood. In other words, we shouldn't just give out advices, opinions, or anything that are based up on our own experiences, before understanding that unique individual. How can we prescribe without proper diagnosis? It simply won't work. And yet, if we estimate our daily life carefully, maybe we are just another exemplar of the ignorant optometrist who gave out a prescription that worked for himself, without a single effort to know more about his patient.

Recently, I was trying to become a supportive friend, who can understand one's problem and provide valuable advices to those who looked for my help. Well, I think I did pretty well at the beginning, and such circumstance had put me on a self-satisfied status. Then I started to lose my patient. I became less considerate. I gave advices before fully understanding my friend's status. I might had listened, but I didn't try to understand my friend. I only listened to accumulate useful details, analyzed the situation, and then gave out answers without empathic listening - the most important step of communication.

Now when I looked back, I should have sensed that my friend didn't get much support from me on that day. During our conversation, I kept mentioning that "influencing another individual is a challenging and time consuming process." I repeated myself again and again. At the end I even thought, "Man, how many times do I need to tell you to get the words into your head! Are you really going to make the mistakes that I have just pointed out a few seconds ago? WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?????"

As you can see, I totally didn't realised that I was making exactly the kind of mistakes I kept talking out! Yeah, influencing another individual is hard, it is not something you may achieve in a day. I should know it. So why panic? What's the rush for?

We have learnt from history that human beings tend to repeat their mistakes. But the good thing is we can still learn from our mistakes. By doing so, we may reduce the probability to fall back to our same old self. I guess that the contradicting and yet amazing thing for being a human being. And of course, we must always admit our mistakes before getting a chance to fix it.

Wish that I can be a better than the me yesterday. Wish that I will have the patience, the wisdom to help others to become better when they need me. And wish that those of you have just finished reading may become better people as well.