Are You Sure She Knows That?

I was out shopping for my beloved Annie, the little girl in my life, with my friend, Betty, who has four daughters of her own, five granddaughters, and two great-granddaughters. She’s a woman of a certain age, with wisdom, whose advice I’m often glad to take.

Shopping for a girl is new to me, the mother of grown sons. I can pull the right car, lego, or chemistry set off the rack in a split second, but this thing about dolls has me both baffled and enchanted. I remember back to childhood, but my own, not that of my children. My most recent home was filled with wheels, not dolls.

We proceeded to the display of angels, which is what Annie had asked for. No, my sons had never requested an angel, nor had they ever dreamed of being a “groom.” It wasn’t just the state of marriage that didn’t immediately enchant them, it was the tux. They never requested dress clothes either!

So many blond angels, I thought, but finally found one with brown hair, like Annie’s. I have noticed the changes in dolls over the years, and always say a silent prayer of thanks that now there are dolls with different shades of skin and hair, and different styles and lengths of hair, as in real life.

I pulled the brown-haired angel off the shelf and put it in my cart.

“What are you doing?” Betty asked.

“Well, Annie’s got brown hair,” I said. “I want her to see there are angels with brown hair.”

“Are you sure she knows that?” Betty replied.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Are you sure she knows she had brown hair and not blond?” Betty clarified.

Ah, I thought, listening to my wise friend. The fantasies we have. No, I thought quickly. I’m sure Annie envisions herself with the long blond hair of fairytales. Like many six year olds, she has a big imagination. I did when I was a little girl. I had blond hair but it wasn’t long blond hair … except in my dreams … because Prince Charming, of course …

Now, this isn’t about dolls resembling humans, or whether boys should be given dolls and girls wheels, or anything bigger than our inner lives, which is the hugest thing there is. As someone said, “We never really grow up, we just learn how to behave in public.”

Behaving in public is knowing you have brown hair, not blond. It means knowing you aren’t really Superman! But how many of us really get there?

I thought of the many adults I know who aren’t aware they “don’t have blond hair.” Perhaps you work with one or socialize with one. Someone who has delusions about themselves, or about how the world works. They come in many forms:

·The manager who thinks he’s God
·The marketing director who thinks she’s Venus, the goddess of Love
·Your friend who thinks he’s Atlas, condemned to carry the world on his shoulders
·Your sister who acts like Rapunzel, waiting to be rescued
·Your frantically “busy” neighbor who thinks the red shoes will save her
·Your partner, who occasionally thinks he’s Rumpelstiltskin and can straw into gold (or maybe you mistakenly think he can)

One of the best things we can do is gently hold up a mirror to someone to show them who they are. Sometimes we don’t know!

As the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote, “O wad some po’er the gift tae gie us, tae see oursel’s as aithers see us,” which usually is translated from the Scottish into “I would to God the gift he’d give us to see ourselves as others see us.”

We see ourselves a certain way, and we also think a certain way. When we’re working with others, managing, parenting or coaching others, it’s important to understand how the other person sees himself of herself.

I use an assessment with clients called The StrengthsFinder® Profile ( http:/ inyurl.com/z750 ). Clients have thus far agreed that it’s right-on. It will show you what they call your “innate strengths,” and they relate to how you see the world, and therefore, how best you deal with it. You. Uniquely.

For instance, one of the Strengths is called “Connectedness.” Here the authors describe to the person with Connectedness what this means: “Things happen for a reason. You are sure of it. You are sure of it because in your soul you know that we are all connected. Yes, we are individuals, responsible for our own judgments and in possession of our own free will, but nonetheless we are part of something larger.” (Now, Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham and Clifton)

Notice how, in describing this person to him or herself, they say “You are sure of I” and “You know.”

As you read this, if you do not have Connectedness for a strength, you will be saying to yourself, “I’M not sure of that!” If you DIDN’T say that, think again. That this person is sure we are all connected to something larger will dictate how they think, how they solve problems, how they relate to other people, and a host of other things and this is the key to how they are different – different from you, and different from others. If you are working with this person, or relating to them and don’t ‘get’ this, you’ll be shadow-boxing.

The blond-hair, brown-hair … it has to do with perception of reality. It’s viewpoint. We each have our own. Children start out with a tenuous grasp of reality. When my Super Hero was little he would tell me defiantly, “Yes I AM going to ….” I would gently correct this to, “You WISH you COULD …” “I can do whatever I want because I’m bigger than you,” he would bellow, which I would translate to, “I know you wish you could do anything you want …”

We need a little of the Super Hero in ourselves to get by. It feeds our dreams, gives us courage and energy, helps us achieve and reach our potential. What we need to do is be mindful about this, and also mindful about this in others, and how it may or may not be distorting the picture. Our dreams and fantasies are directly related to our feelings, and our feelings guide our behavior.

Emotional Intelligence is all about self-awareness. Only when you are aware of yourself and your feelings can you understand those of others.

Remember that “Rumpelstiltskin” over there thinks he can spin straw into gold (and probably thinks you can too), so his expectations are going to be very high, and his disappointments very high as well, when he finds out he can’t (and that you can’t). Help him keep things in perspective because, alas, no one can spin straw into gold.

And help Atlas shrug. If you’ve got Connectedness, you’re just the one to do that. You know that we’re all connected and here to help one another. Atlas doesn’t have to carry the world all on his own shoulders.

Study Emotional Intelligence and develop yours. It will help you understand people better!