[lightworker888]

when my husband and I are dealing with people whose views differ from ours. Whoever thinks of it first reminds the other one that this person is doing the best that s/he can given their history, energy available at the moment, circumstance, knowledge they have etc. and that if we had the same input as her/him that we would be doing the same thing. (I know that may be a big jump for many people!) It's similar to "there but for the grace of God, go I". It really has helped us in many situations to be more understanding and less defensive about our views.

Another good question that we got from a trainer was " What presuppositions must that person have to lead to that conclusion." That has often been useful as the person was usually just missing some info and jumping to a conclusion from a picture they were creating their own history and from limited input. In fact in one course we learned that 80% of our conclusions come from our history and only 10% from the information. At that rate it's a miracle we can communicate clearly at all, let alone understand the person enough to make a judgement call.

LW888