Dense Discovery – Issue #251
She knew from prior experience that people who are demanding, critical, and angry tend to be intensely lonely. She intuited that there was some internal struggle inside John, that there were feelings he was hiding from, which he had built moats and fortresses to keep away.
David Brooks • How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
“As we’ve seen, all criticism, attack, insults, and judgments vanish when we focus attention on hearing the feelings and needs behind a message. The more we practice in this way, the more we realize a simple truth: behind all those messages we’ve allowed ourselves to be intimidated by are just individuals with unmet needs appealing to us to contrib... See more
Mindy Zhang • My personal values
Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting.