“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” – Henry David Thoreau

You could take a group of people and have them all look at the very same situation and yet later if you asked each person what they saw they will likely describe having seen different things. That’s because everyone’s perspective of what they see is unique. Each person’s view is a combination of their own past experiences along their own emotions at that moment. There are two profound lessons that come from recognizing that:

1.Sometimes when we have disagreements with someone we love and we feel hurt or angry we need to get ourselves to step back and recognize that perhaps the disagreement stemmed from both of us seeing things in a totally different way.

2.It’s important to realize that we have the ability to see things from a different perspective if we choose to.

Sometimes when we are in the heat of the discussion or argument we get so caught up in our emotions that we don’t even think to step back and try to view things from the other person’s perspective. Yet if we would do that we may be able to avoid the disagreement in the first place or at the very least help it come to a peaceful end much more quickly.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a single disagreement I have had with someone, especially when it is with someone we love, where I felt happy that the disagreement happened. But if we want to avoid hurt feelings we have to find ways to remind ourselves that perhaps we might need to see things from another perspective in order to understand where there the other person is coming from– once we do that it is much easier to find a way to compromise or at the very least we can help each other to understand why we feel the way we do in a peaceful and loving way.

One trick that always helps me is to remind myself that I love this person and at the end of the day I want us to be happy – if you remember that when you have difficult discussions they will always go better – that and always remember to hug it out….hugs always make things a little better!

~Amy Rees Anderson