Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Guessing people's feelings; playing 20 questions
Dear Darren,
I still haven’t answered the question of how you’re supposed to be able to figure people out when they always hide their feelings. The secret is, they don’t totally hide their feelings. They show hints about the feelings that they want you to notice. But it’s a game they want you to figure out. They don’t think it’s cool to simply tell you how they’re feeling. The game is for you to play twenty questions.
So you guess. You look at their face. Is it sad? Is it happy? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. It takes practice. And sometimes you’ll guess wrong. But that’s OK because they’ll correct you.
You say, “Oh, are you having a bad day today?” And they will be glad you asked, even if they are having a perfectly fine day. They will be pleased because to them your question about their day means that you care about them.
Recently there was a Zits comic strip where the dad said, “Want to know the secret to impressing women? Ask them questions about the things that interest them and then listen really hard to the answers.” His teenage boy thought for awhile and then said, “That might just be crazy enough to work!”
And it is crazy enough to work. Everyone likes to talk about their own interests, not yours. And how do you know what they are interested in? Most people are interested in themselves and their family and their job or their classes and their pets and their house…you get the idea. And mostly, they are interested in their feelings. Which is why you want to learn how to discover people’s feelings.
Love,
Mom
I still haven’t answered the question of how you’re supposed to be able to figure people out when they always hide their feelings. The secret is, they don’t totally hide their feelings. They show hints about the feelings that they want you to notice. But it’s a game they want you to figure out. They don’t think it’s cool to simply tell you how they’re feeling. The game is for you to play twenty questions.
So you guess. You look at their face. Is it sad? Is it happy? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. It takes practice. And sometimes you’ll guess wrong. But that’s OK because they’ll correct you.
You say, “Oh, are you having a bad day today?” And they will be glad you asked, even if they are having a perfectly fine day. They will be pleased because to them your question about their day means that you care about them.
Recently there was a Zits comic strip where the dad said, “Want to know the secret to impressing women? Ask them questions about the things that interest them and then listen really hard to the answers.” His teenage boy thought for awhile and then said, “That might just be crazy enough to work!”
And it is crazy enough to work. Everyone likes to talk about their own interests, not yours. And how do you know what they are interested in? Most people are interested in themselves and their family and their job or their classes and their pets and their house…you get the idea. And mostly, they are interested in their feelings. Which is why you want to learn how to discover people’s feelings.
Love,
Mom
