5 reasons to communicate with people who are different from you

Original author: Harvey Deutschendorf
  • Transfer
image

In this article, Harvey Deutschendorf talks about the benefits of communicating with people who are different from you. If your motto is “no new friends”, then it is time to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone . It's worth it.

One way or another, we all strive for a comfort zone, and one of the easiest ways to stay in it is to spend time with people who are like us.

Such people agree with us, think like us, their point of view on problems is similar to ours. At first, it may seem that all this makes our life easier, but there is a flip side to the coin.

Spending time only with people like us, we do not grow, and although we may be less comfortable with people who are different from us, we develop next to them.

The following five aspects presented to your attention will allow you to realize the benefits of communicating with people who are different from you:

1. Your identity will expand and it will be easier for you to accept other people.


Being surrounded by those who think differently from us, we begin to understand ourselves better. We are more aware of the reason we choose to be who we are and think the way we think. We gradually realize that the views of different people on the same things may not coincide. We begin to avoid patterns of thinking in which “we” are opposed to “them,” “right” to “wrong.” (We recommend reading a useful article on how to develop “dynamic thinking . )

2. Your thinking will become more critical.


People who are different from us thereby challenge our way of thinking, our feelings and what we consider the norm. We can be mistaken and look at things from a limited point of view. Communicating with other people who see the world differently will help us realize that there are many completely different points of view, that everyone has their own reasons to think so and not otherwise. This awareness will help us easily change our own ideas about what is happening if we find that someone else's point of view is more meaningful than our own.

3. You can enjoy the talents of others


We all have strengths and weaknesses. Someone may well see the situation as a whole, but find it difficult to navigate in detail because there is not enough patience, or simply interest. This person will greatly succeed if there is someone in his or her immediate environment who is well versed in the details. Such a person will help the first to learn to think about the consequences of their actions, while someone who is used to considering the situation completely will help the second not to get bogged down in details.

4. You will make more informed decisions.


If you have people in your environment who are able to look at situations from different points of view, this will help you get a more complete and clear picture of what is happening. Based on this, you can make more informed decisions .

Abraham Lincoln was well known for recruiting people to the government who thought completely differently than he did. While many would see this as a threat, Lincoln realized that some areas of knowledge were not familiar to him, and he needed people who would be strong in these areas. He formed a strong, diverse team, which could rarely be taken by surprise, because everyone was doing his own thing and was not sprayed.

5. Your life will become more interesting and eventful.


Being surrounded by those with whom we are comfortable, we can become boring, lethargic, lose creativity. Only difficulties support the vitality and desire to act in us, opening up a completely new and exciting world in which we have the opportunity to think and enjoy life.

PS. We recommend another article on the topic - The Secret on how to do everything on time.

Translation by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult

Also popular now: