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5 Life-Changing Benefits of Taking Others’ Perspectives
An important skill you can have as a human being is the capability to take a different perspective.
The real voyage of discovery consists in…seeing with new eyes. — Marcel Proust
No two people will see things the same way. Each one of us has a unique perspective that we bring into our experiences.
Your perspective is defined by the way you see the world and it’s shaped by your life experiences and values. It is your “sixth sense.”
In Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want, Nicholas Epley, a psychologist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, explored the power of the sixth sense.
He described it as “our ability to infer what’s going on in another’s mind, what they think, feel, and want.”
Epley explained that to successfully understand the other person’s point of view, we have to “get” rather than take their perspectives. It’s a subtle, but important distinction.
Getting the other person’s perspective implies reaching out, consciously asking, and listening to their side of the story on a specific situation. It’s about being authentically curious to hear, learn, and understand what they…
