[Read] How to Know a Person

 How to know a person, The art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen. By David Brooks

This is the second time I read David's books. I have written a review of his book 第二座山 about 4 years ago. I still remember how he emphasized the importance of having religions in our communities. Back at that time, I was an atheist or more precisely still felt confused among so many religions choices. After few years, I became a Christian and tried hard to empty old me and gain more Spirit day by day. Looking back of my past 5 years, I felt surprised how many I went through and how much I have changed in terms of my mindset. One of the chapter in this book remind the readers that we are constantly changing, but we often forget this changing factor when we judge others. 

This book gives me a chance to observe other people throgh new persepectives. I appriciated the chapter taught us how to properly accompany others when they have hard time. It also gives me a role model to pursue, which is to become a illuminator among your friends. For me, this book is more like a tool book. It will be more useful if I can revisit some chapters once for a while to remind myself the good ways to treat people comfortablely. Generally speaking, I find this book really useful for me!

However, I do see some bad comments from the internet about this book. I agreed to some points. For example, I found the chapters are incoherent. There were no strong connection between each chapters. If I didn't take note deliberately, I would forget the majority contents right after finishing it. Some people found the points in the book were not practical. I personally feel that to know a person doesn't have a single golden rule. The auther provides some approaches in the book that may be good for some people grew up in the similar background as him, but may not apply to all.

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 (I see you) from Ch1 to Ch7, part 2 (I see you in your struggles) from ch8 to ch12 and part 3 (I see you with your strengths) from ch13 to ch17.

---- part 1----

Ch1. The power of being seen: Two kinds of people: diminishes (make people feel small and unseen) vs illuminators (have a persistent curiosity about other people). Many of our big national problems arise from the fraying of our social fabric.

Ch2 how not to see a person: size-up (you make judgement about other when you first meet them), egotism (all about myself), anxiety (afraid of being disliked), naïve realism (dont realize that people have so many different perspectives), the lesser-minds problem ( think others don't think too much because we can go into their thoughts but we keep listening to our thoughts all days), objectivism (need to focus on individuals but not groups), essentialism (believe certain groups have an essential and immutable nature. E.g. how Christian should act), the static mindset (ignore people would change with time)

Ch3 illumination: everyone is equal deep inside our heart. Just like how God see each of us encompass his image. Illuminator's gaze: tenderness (is deep emotional concern about another), receptivity (overcome insecurity and self-preoccupation), active curiosity, affection (good Samaritan, when someone see another without really seeing, it is a failure of the heart), generosity, a holistic attitude ( don't just see a piece of men). Morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others. Because we don't see people accurately, we treat them wrongly.

Ch4 accompaniment: use a analogy of Loren eiseley floating in a river to explain how we accompany others. If you don't talk about the little things on a regular basis, it's hard to talk about the big things. 1. Patience: decelerating the pace of social life. Be a lingerable person. 2. Playfulness: because people are more fully human when they are at play. 3. Other-centerdness: lose ourselves and transcending our ego. Just behold. 4. Presence: when someone is going through a hard time, you don't need to say some wise things; you just have to be there.

Ch5. What is a person: using a story of tunami to illustrate different people persive the same fact profoundly different because each of the people has different roles and processing mind. There are two layers of reality. 1. The objective reality. 2. The subjective reality ( how what happened is seen, interpreted, made meaningful.) so the important thing is how does this person interpret what happensed rather than what happened to this person. A person's whole perspective can be transformed.

I really appriciate this perspective! Imaging the same thing happened to us in our early 20s and late 20s, we would probably react entirely differently. For instance, when I carried my luggages from my small hometown to a big city for college in the same country, it took me several months to rebuild my social life and adjust myself to a new environment. Several years later, I carried my luggages again from the big city to another small city outside of my country. It still took me several months even years to adjust all the new things. The transition was so painful, but I also learned and became stronger each time. When I looked back to all the things I encountered when I first came to the new place, I knew that I think differently right now. I knew that I didn't need to panic or feel upset. Since one objective reality can make infinite subjective reality in people's mind. We should always be aware of this and have more empathy toward others.

Ch6. Good talk: slant method in the middle of conversation (sit up, lean forward, ask questions, nod your head, track the speaker). Be a loud listener (active listening, an invitation to express). Favor familiarity (people love to talk about things they are familiar). Make them author, not witnesses (ask for stories about specific events or experiences. Ask about how other "experienced" what happened then and now). Don't fear the pause ( speaking and listening involved many of the same brain area). Do the looping (repeat what someone just said toake sure you understand other correctly), the midwife model (in a conversation, a midwife is there to make people feel safe and encourage a deeper honesty). Keep the gem statement at the center. Find the disagreement under the disagreement. Don't be a topper ( I need to remind myself about this one a lot. A topper is like when people are talking about their problems, you response with your similar problems and share your own experiences too much.)

Ch7. The right questions: learn to ask the right questions. Not base on evaluating people like where do you go to college? What do you do? Don't ask closed questions like were you close? Or questions too board like what's up?
Start a question like how did you? What's it like? Tell me about.. in what ways...

---- part 2----

Ch9 hard conversation: 1. Prior to entering into any hard conversation, it's important to think about conditions before you think about content. Conditions ( similar to your social status in the conversation) 2. Every conversation takes place on two level: the official conversation and the actual conversation ( how you feel) 3. Every conversation exists within a frame. Try to stay within the other person's standpoint to more fully understand how the world looks to them. Hard conversation are hard because people in different life circumstances construct very different realities. They literally see different world.

I think this chapter is related to ch5 in terms of the concepts of the objective reality and the subjective reality

Ch10. How do you serve a friend who is in despair? If you have friends in depression, you don't have to try to coax someone out of depression. Show that you understand their suffer. Offer them the comfort of being seen.

This one is so hard... I'm still learning!

Ch11. The art of empathy:  the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. Some defense behaviors. 1. Avoidance: minimize emotions and relationships because the inner fear of being hurt. 2. Deprivation: keep feeling worthlessness no matter how successful they are. 3. Over reactivity 4. Passive aggression: indirect expression of anger. We see through the world with unique models based on what we have encountered in our lives. The defense models someone process may control them and sometimes is outdated. We didn't change our models with time. Introspection isn't the best way to repair your models; communication is. Empathy helps us guide our friends through the tough time by communication. Empathy consists of at least 3 related skills. 1. Mirroring ( accurately catching the emotion of the person in front of you. People who have good mirroring skills have higher emotional granularity, which is the skills that can tell different emotions apart.) 2. Mentalizing. ( Ability to figure out why they are experiencing what they are experiencing) 3. Caring (the awareness that the other person has a consciousness that is different from my own)

This chapter is so deep! I like the sentense told us to communicate to people instead of introspection. Only people who are outside of our own thinking models can point out the blind spots.

Ch12. How were you shaped by your sufferings? People who grow try to accommodate what happens in order to create new models. Author provided several ways to help us excavate our past. 1. Fill the blanks with friend. In our family, the one thing you must never do is ___? And in our family, the one thing you must do above all else is __? 2. For couple, write out a summary of the year from their partner's point of view. 3. Walking through periods of the other person's life, year by year 4. Write about your emotional experiences for 20 minutes. 5. Just have serious conversations with friends.

---- part 3----

Ch13. Personality: a healthy society need a wide variety of human types. 5 personality traits. Each trait is like a two sower edges. 1. Extroversion: people are highly drawn to all positive emotions. 2. Conscientious: people have excellent impulse control, experience more guilt and well suited to predictable environments. 3. Neuroticism: people response powerfully to negative emotions and have more emotional ups and downs over the course of a day. 4. Agreeableness: people good at getting along with people. People are naturally prone to paying attention to what's going on in other people's minds. Lower divorce rate. 5. Openness: people are powerfully motivated to have new experiences and to try new ideas. The 5 traits change through life. In general, people get better as they age.

Ch14. Life tasks: 1. The imperial task: self central thinking. 2. The interpersonal task: quick to form cliques and think a lot about social status. 3.career consolidation: find the mission of your life, people become better at self control, at governing their emotions. 4. The generative task: people try to find some way to be of service to the world. One way is to become parents and another way is to get prompted to a leadership position. There can be a kind of loneliness to a person in this consciousness. 5. Integrity vs despair: it's a feeling of peace that you have used and are using your time well. VS despair is marked by a sense of regret. Each person you meet is at one spot on their lifelong process of growth. We are often blind to how much we are changing.

Ch15. Life stories: storytelling conversations are better than comment- making conversations. Two modes of thinkings: paradigmatic mode ( making an argument, asking people what do you think about xxx) and narrative mode ( asking people how did you come to believe xxx, ask people their childhood, intentions and goals.). You can't know who you are unless you know how to tell your story. On the other hand, when listening to peoples stories, we need to pay attention to 1. people's tone of voice. With that, we can have a sense of the characteristics of the people. 2. Who is the hero here? The Imago of a person, which means our most cherished desires and goals. 3. What's the plot here? By adulthood most of us have settled on the overarching plotlines of our lives, and we have often selected those plotlines from stories that are common in our culture. 4. How reliable is this narrator? 5. Narrative flexibility: life is a constant struggle to refine and update our stories.

Ch16. Your ancestors: where you come from shape your thoughts. Each person is a cultural co-creator, embracing some bits of their culture, rejecting others. A classic 1972 study. When shown pictures of a chicken, a cow and grass, the American kids put the chicken and cow together. The Taiwanese kids put the cow and the grass together. The Americana tended to sort by categories and the Taiwanese tended to sort by relationships. Despite this, we need to be very careful with generalization.

Ch17. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the ability to see deeply into who people are and how they should move in the complex situation of life. I like the quote at the end from W.H.Auden's poem: if equal affection cannot be/ Let the more loving one be me.

I tried to take notes of the important points I found in each chapter. The ultimate goal is for me to revisit the content in the future. But if any random readers find it useful, please let me know in the comment!