[Nat]

Are you interested in knowing another person's point of view?

The feeling part - feeling other people's feelings or having a resonance in your body with what's going on with them - maybe there's not we can do about that. It either happens or it doesn't happen if we're open for it.

But to use our imagination and our thinking, that's something we have some choice over. So if you find yourself in a difficult situation with other people, a difficult interpersonal situation, from what perspective do you look at the difficulty?

One of the perspectives to bring into this situation is, "What is it like for that person? How is it for them to be in this conflict? How is it for them to be struggling? What's going on for them in their life that they are so angry? Let me take a moment here to try to understand the background of their situation - they are afraid. What happened in their life that they are so afraid?
That's a choice - to take time to think and reflect what perspective - what's the bigger picture - that this person is operating under, as opposed to retaining only the perspective of "This person's had an impact on ME, and this is the impact it's had on ME, and this person better understand MY perspective and ME history and what happened to ME in my life - and I'm going to tell them."

- Gil Fronsdal