Episode #42 - The Diminishing Tendencies We Do to Those We Love

A diminishing tendency is an accidental or purposeful propensity to avoid deeply seeing the heart motivation or needs of another person due to your own ignorance, assumptions, or offenses.  In this episode, we define these and do some soul-searching to see if these are affecting our connection to those we love most.  

This concept is laid out in the book, How to Know a Person by David Brooks. Listed below are the names and descriptions of each of these tendencies.  

-Size Up - a quick judgment or generalization of another person based on a first instinct or gut reaction

-Static Mindset - when you have known someone for a long time and you form a certain conception of that person, but you don’t update your model of who they are or how they may have changed.

-Egotism - a self-centered obsession that keeps the focus on your own point of view and experiences

-Anxiety - noise in your own head that is insecure and fearful, and prevents you from hearing another person’s perspective and heart

-Naïve Realism - assuming that your view is the objective view and others should see reality as you do

-The Lesser Minds Problem - the tendency  to think that you are more complicated, perceptive, and high-minded than others based on the fact that you judge others by the words they say, not realizing that not having access to the other person’s thoughts greatly limits your ability to see the full picture

-Objectivism - the tendency to objectify and/or overly simplify another person’s perspective, without giving credit to their unique perspective, deeper feelings, experiences, desires, and intuition.

-Essentialism - the practice of learning one thing about a person, then making a whole series  of further assumptions about them based on that one aspect of their identity