Question

Why is it important to consider perspectives across different ages

Answer 1

• Each individual experiences the world from their own unique perspective.We do not live in isolation and each person has to engage and work with others in order to be successful or get anything done.
• In order to work effectively with people, it’s incredibly important that we are able to engage in perspective taking. We need to understand how someone else sees the world to be able to work together, communicate and show empathy and understanding.
• It’s an expectation as an adult that you will listen to and respect the opinions and experiences of other people. It’s a crucial skill for all relationships, friendships and professional and romantic relationships.
• Perspective taking is involving several distinct skills, including:
• Determining how someone else feels. In order to do this, we have to use our knowledge and understanding of someone while also ignoring our own opinions, thoughts or feelings and trying to figure out how the other person must be feeling or thinking.
• Inhibitory control-In order to think about the world from someone else’s understanding, we have to put our own thoughts on hold. When we use inhibitory control to engage in perspective taking, we are pausing our own desires to think of someone else.
• Cognitive flexibility- In order to switch up our perspective, we have to look outside the box of our normal thinking. This requires cognitive flexibility in helping us change the focus of our attention from ourselves to someone else.
• Perspective taking is really a social-emotional-intellectual skill, in that it requires hard work from our brains and also utilizes empathy and understanding.
• Perspective taking is that all important skill of being able to look at things from a point of view other than our own.
• Perspective taking brings in the mindfulness of compassion and empathy to our relationships. When these two qualities are present in our interactions mutual respect, success and movement forward is guaranteed.
  
• Perspective taking relies not only upon our ability to share emotions with others, but also upon our capacity to regulate our own emotions. To be effective with others we must be aware of what might trigger us so we can quickly refocus ourselves on what is happening with the other.
• When it comes to empathy, the point is not to ask ourselves what we would do in any given situation; it’s to try and understand what another would do.
• If our empathic accuracy and emotional regulation skills are strong we are more successful in our interactions. We possess the depth and awareness to predict the attitudes, expectations, and intentions of others that may be very different from our own.
• This creates an interpersonal connectedness which is built to thrive and succeed because people feel heard, validated and understood on the other side of us.
• Perspective taking requires the maturity to gain the knowledge and be respectful of another person’s personal beliefs. When we are disrespectful to another person and their belief system it is the quickest path to creating separation and division between people. It is the surest way to upset a coworker, vendor or boss.
• Success in life and business boils down effective interactions, humility, self-awareness and the all-important skill of perspective-taking. These elements are the keys to success of any kind.