They Just Don’t Get It

I had a discussion with someone yesterday.

It was basically about the fine line between self care and pushing yourself to produce creative output.

It wasn’t a bad discussion at all but at some point I realized that the other person just didn’t get my point.

He said he did, but it was clear to me that he didn’t.

Maybe I didn’t explain it well enough, but maybe what I was trying to say just doesn’t exist in his world.

This happens quite frequently.

And often we confuse discussions with having to persuade the other people of our opinion, which is not the case. And not the point of this email.

The point is that you argue from your perspective with the life experience you have. And that’s exactly what happened in the discussion I had. I argued from a perspective of having gotten through an experience that gave me a different view of things.

And – in my biased, subjective view – apparently that wasn’t the case for the other person, so it would be appropriate to say that this point of view simply didn’t exist in the world of the other person. 

And therefore that person couldn’t see my argument.

The outcome?

None. I said everything I could say on the topic and that was it.

What was nice after the discussion, the other person got back to me over messenger (the discussion happened on a video call) and apologized to me because he thought he was too harsh on me. Which he wasn’t.

We just had different points of view, that’s all.

The point here:

It will happen again and again and again that people don’t get what you want to say.

The only thing that you can do? Try to explain your position as clear and as respectfully as possible and if that’s not enough, let it go. You can’t change how the other person sees the world. Only the other person can do that.

And it’s also a good opportunity to become aware that maybe sometimes we are the “other person” that doesn’t get the point.

And that’s okay too.

Accepting others as they are and accepting ourselves as we are is an important part of becoming and staying emotionally stable.

If we’re fighting with others constantly, trying to convince them of our world view because we’re so convinced it’s the “correct one”, we’ll lose so much energy that we can put to good use otherwise.

Being creative and inspired, for example. 

How to spot and avoid more “inspiration killers” to free up your energy for creating: