So life is all about relationships and relationships are all about trust and what I'm hoping and I'm
able to consider and hopefully appreciate and understand is that our ability to connect with other people
is going to be pretty much determined by our willingness to look at things look at life from other people's
perspectives.
And this brings us onto a really fascinating process stroke idea that I want to share with you.
In this video and this is very much about us building up and enhancing the levels of trust that we have
in our relationships with other people especially with our clients which we can do so when we get we
actively engage in a process of looking at life through their eyes and seeing life from their perspective.
So this is an idea that I've drawn from Neuro Linguistic Programming and this modalities way of looking
at things and perceptual positions is about taking another position.
I would say that the view that we would naturally be inclined to take are or hold.
So say for example if you were to engage in a discussion with another person and then this other person
was to say something that you fundamentally disagree with and then you go ahead and disagree.
Well disagreement is a fantastic way of severing the connection and the trust between between people
and then there's an alternative approach that we can take when our goal isn't to be right and it's not
about correcting another person or telling them what we see or what we think or what our opinion is
but instead our goal is to understand the other person's perspective and how it is that they see things.
And this is a fantastic model that allows us to do this.
So what perceptual positions tells us is that there's three ways of looking at any circumstance or situation
or any conversation that we have.
All right.
Though by now I'm hoping that we've grasped this fact the way in which we see things isn't always the
way that things are.
So we as life coaches doesn't matter how skilled and competent we become.
We are still more than capable of misinterpreting and misreading circumstances situations and people
at times.
So we want to minimize the risk of this happening for the purposes of maintaining connection people
and preserving the trust that is in place.
So the first angle that we can take when looking at situations and relationships conversations is from
the from the viewpoint of self.
I know when we're having a conversation with another person especially on an intellectual or a rational
level we're talking about what we think what we feel how we see things how we've interpreted other people's
events and all this kind of stuff the viewpoint of self what we focus on all the time and what we feel.
No this is the perspective that most people get trapped in in life.
Why.
Because it's the one that we're most accustomed to.
This is our default setting if you like looking at the world through our own eyes interpreting our life's
events as we interpret them and just thinking that everything that we assume to be true is true.
When we start serving other people when we start coaching or you know start focusing our efforts towards
helping other people in life this wants to become our new default mode.
All right we're we're actually going against the grain we're no longer buying into our own perception
our own ways of looking at life anymore but instead we're doing our best pretty much all the time to
look at life through other people's eyes knowing that if we're doing this we're going to stand a better
chance of being able to empathetically connect with them first and foremost but also relate to them
secondly and on a third level fundamentally understand them.
That's when we start operating from this perspective seeking first to understand the people.
This is what leads us to ask better questions so you've just said that I don't quite understand that.
Help me understand.
So you've just made this observation and how was it you arrived at this.
We are asking questions for the purpose of understanding people not advising them or correcting them
or showing them up to be right or wrong or anything like this.
All right.
The second perspective is all about us understanding how the other person sees a situation from the
perspective the matters the most to them.
All right.
This is what allows us to empathetically relate with them on a much deeper level.
And incidentally when we start connecting with people through this perceptual position the feedback
that you're likely to get from other people is that my goodness I just feel like like like you were
there with me through that conversation my goodness I feel like we've got a really strong connection.
I really feel like we're like we're like we're connecting well here.
Why.
Because when we're operating from just a limited perspective of self Well our goal isn't to understand
but when we're operating from the perspective of other Our goal was to understand and see and appreciate
their perspective self perceptual position is just about our perspective.
This is about.
There's no.
What are these possible times to fall victim to our own personal prejudices or personal biases on our
own subjectivity.
But sometimes we can also fall victim to another person's personal biases subjectivity by over relating
to them.
All right.
So there's two sides to every coin.
All right.
Sometimes if we under relates to another person it can cost us connection and trust.
Sometimes if we over relates to another person by putting ourselves in their shoes especially as coaches
we can we can end up also doing more damage than good.
And by making another person's story more about us than what it is about them.
If that makes sense.
All right.
So what I'm going to propose the healthiest perceptual position that we can operate from as coaches
is yes we want to dabble in the other person's perspective so we can understand how it is that they
see things and how they've perhaps arrived at these perspectives.
But I'm going to suggest that this third perceptual position being observer the right is how this situation
appears to a person who's not involved in the situation whatsoever.
We want to be looking at the person's circumstance their story their situation from a completely objective
perspective because the perspective of self is obviously subjective to us the perspective of other is
obviously subjective to the other but the perspective of an observer is always going to remain objective
by nature and based upon facts.
My goodness.
So you've just mentioned this you've just mentioned done and how is it you know that this is true and
for what purpose have you made this decision and how specifically do you see this decision helping you
or serving you or aiding you you know getting closer to this long term medium term short term goal that
you have.
All right.
So as individuals we want to remain objective in our interactions and conversations with them.
And then this is kind of where we want to be aiming for and approaching our relationships from this
observer perspective.
You know how the situation appears to someone who's just simply not involved.
This just allows us to remain grounded in this place of natural intrigue.
We're not wanting to understand this second person or clients for our own interests and we're certainly
not wanting to over relate to them.
What we want become grounded in is what's actually true for them and how their perspective or how their
perception differs from that which is true.
Remember the.
And there was the third or the fourth pillar and relationships it was building healthy relationships
is truth.
All right.
So our effectiveness as life coaches is going to be determined by our ability to lead our clients into
greater degrees of insight and revelation into that which is true for them.
So this is what we want to be doing here as observers of our clients lives.
And yes we want to be looking and fully acknowledge in their perspective but through the lens of truth
to question their perspective to help them see that which is true from that which isn't true and ultimately
grow and develop their perspective.
So and does this make sense a following on don't worry if not in the next video I'm going to welcome
back Karen for the first time in this section.
I'm going to have perceptual positions a conversation we're gonna ask Karen to talk about our relationship
that she has in our life at the moment there just isn't quite where she hopes or wants to be.
And we're going to explore why the relationship is in the state that it sent.
And then we're going to go to look at this relationship from these three different angles to see how
her perspective shifts and changes.
So hope you find this interesting and look forward to seeing how this concept is applied in actuality.
And the next clip.