It’s funny how people are so prone to misinterpret. He said this, she took it that way, now they don’t like each other. Only to find out, he meant this, she took it that way, and the animosity was all for naught. Just think about how many times you have seen this, or, more importantly, experienced it yourself.
There is an old adage, “curiosity killed the cat.” I can see how that makes sense. However, the cat was sniffing into other people’s business and got his nose cut off. However, what did curiosity do to the dog?
It can be best said this way – “Curiosity killed the cat. But it made the dog stronger.” Why? Because the dog was curious not for the purposes of being nosey, but the curiosity brought CLARITY. Moreover, the curiosity destroyed assumption, and actually produced a stronger core to ACTIVELY LISTEN, even when it seems so tempting to interrupt and resort to a negative perception.
It’s so easy to dislike someone and blow them off from a simple misread. However, it’s much harder to spend time to know them, so the gem that assumption would have destroyed could be prevented. Relationships stemmed from negative assumption usually results in major repair; relationships stemmed from healthy curiosity usually results in major rapport.
Spend time to figure out the true meaning of someone, rather than creating your version of who they are or what they said. Oftentimes, it is a stark misread, and a potentially dynamic relationship could be missed.
Let’s build each other by being positively curious.
Otherwise, we’ll regretfully say, “You mean THAT? You meant WHAT?!”