However, by practicing a technique called “perspective-taking,” we can learn how to better resolve these social conflicts. And by doing this, we can start building stronger relationships in our lives.

One of the main assumptions behind perspective-taking is that looking at a problem from multiple viewpoints is almost always more informative than looking at a problem from only one viewpoint.

The problem with most people is that they get trapped in their worldview. They only look at things from a single perspective, and in return they ignore alternative ways of looking at a situation which may be just as valid.

Every problem in a relationship can be viewed from at least three perspectives.

Perspective of Self: This is how the problem is interpreted from your own experience, based on your own thoughts and feelings in that situation.

Perspective of Other: This is how the problem is interpreted from the experience of the other person involved in the situation, based on their thoughts and feelings.

Perspective of Third Party: This is how the problem is interpreted from someone who isn’t involved in the situation, but instead looking from a neutral, outside perspective (the “the fly on a wall” approach).

None of these perspectives are necessarily right or wrong. Instead, they each contain an important piece of the puzzle. Depending on the situation, there can be many different perspectives. For example, a strike looks very different from the viewpoint of a CEO, a worker, a customer and a supplier.

Solving a problem is almost always harder to do if a person only appreciates their viewpoint, but doesn’t consider the views of others. However, when we take into account everyone’s perspective, we are more likely to discover solutions that respect everyone’s needs.

Practice perspective-taking in your daily relationships.

The better you are at perspective-taking, the stronger your relationships will become. Here are some tips for practicing this technique:

• Remember your perspective isn’t the only one in the world.
• When faced with a problem, walk yourself through everyone’s point-of-view.
• From each perspective ask, “What is this person thinking or feeling in this situation?”
• Try imagining yourself in the other person’s shoes. What does the world look like through their eyes? What’s it like to experience life as this person?
• Identify common ground.
• Acknowledge differences.
• Seek resolutions based on this new information. What are some ways to solve this problem while respecting everyone’s needs?

Now, perspective-taking probably won’t help you solve every problem in your relationships. However, using this technique can really improve understanding and ease conflict in the long-term.

Individuals who are successful at building relationships are almost always great at perspective-taking, whether they realize it or not.

Fortunately, even if this technique doesn’t come naturally to you, you can consciously practice perspective-taking over time. With dedication you will become much better at putting yourself in other people’s shoes, and you’ll find your relationships will dramatically improve.

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I remember a time when I was very depressed, and looking back, I can now see how my absolutist views were a big reason I couldn’t get out of the rut I was stuck in for so long.

Black and white thinking is our tendency to look at the world in terms of “all or nothing.” We either find things to be “good” or “bad,” “beautiful” or “ugly,” “easy” or “hard,” “happy” or “sad.”

We don’t acknowledge all the grey areas in life. The things we can’t fit into a box. Life’s paradoxes. Unknowns. The stuff that’s difficult to put into words.

Instead, black and white thinking is the illusion that we have all the answers to life when we really don’t. And when we engage in this type of thinking, it can actually cause a lot of unnecessary problems in our life.

Black and white thinking limits our perspective.

When we only see things in black and white, we miss out on alternative ways of viewing the world. These other perspectives may be just as good if not better than our current perspective.

Black and white thinking often creates a false choice between “A” and “B,” when “C” is the more accurate and helpful view. Unfortunately, if we only think in black and white terms, then we are unlikely to even consider “C” a possibility in the first place.

Black and white thinking increases depression.

A black and white viewpoint often creates artificial “needs” in our life that lead to disappointment and depression.

The cognitive-based psychotherapist Albert Ellis called one example of this “musterbation.” This is our tendency to think that we must have something, or we must do something, or life must be a certain way – or it will be awful.

Black and white thinking doesn’t open us up to the possibility that even if life doesn’t work out exactly the way we think it should, we can still find happiness.

Black and white thinking makes us less willing to compromise.

Black and white thinking doesn’t just hurt ourselves, but also the relationships we try to build with other people. When we view the world in strict and over-simplistic terms, we are less likely to compromise and cooperate with others to meet common interests.

Again, it’s because we don’t acknowledge the grey areas in life. We believe everything needs to be a specific way, and we aren’t willing to deviate from this narrow view of the world.

This makes us stubborn and frustrating to live with or work with. People are often turned off by those who think they are always right and hold dogmatic views about the world. If you want to build stronger relationships, then try being more flexible.

Black and white thinking makes us less adaptive.

At the end of the day, black and white thinking makes us less adaptive to our surroundings. This hinders our growth as individuals. It’s also what keeps us stuck in old habits and thought patterns.

Once we acknowledge that we don’t know everything about the world, we can begin to learn new things and change our ways.

Black and white thinking comes with the assumption that we always know where to “draw lines in the sand.” But the truth is we don’t. Sometimes new information and new experiences tell us we need to adjust those lines we draw. And without this open-mindedness, we will always be trapped within those same limitations.

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It’s important to remember that even when you act with the best intentions, you don’t always know what is best for someone else.

Here are some guidelines to determine if you’re really helping someone or not.

You make people dependent on you.

As the old saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

When you focus only on people’s temporary needs, but you don’t teach them how to take care of themselves, in a way you make them a type of prisoner to you or someone else.

Because if someone is completely dependent on someone else for food or happiness or success, then they can never be truly free to live and sustain their life on their own.

This kind of dependence can be helpful, but only in those rare cases where people are completely unable to take care of themselves. For example, due to a severe mental or physical disorder. Otherwise, fostering this kind of dependency is usually harmful and unhealthy.

You try to do things outside of your power.

One of the worst ways to help people is to try to change something that is outside of your power. Because when you intervene in problems, especially ones which you have no knowledge or experience in, you can often make a situation worse.

It’s important to accept that sometimes you aren’t capable of helping someone. Sometimes you need to let go and let things take their natural course. After all, you are only human, and you don’t have the time and resources to help every person in every given situation.

You try to help people who clearly don’t want your help.

Another common mistake is trying to help people who don’t want your help. When you try to change something against a person’s will, it can often backfire and make them rebel against you. They may do the opposite of what you say just because they don’t want to feel like they are following your advice.

If someone doesn’t want your help, it’s important to respect that. As I mentioned before, you don’t always know what is best for everyone, and sometimes someone else’s perspective is going to be a lot different than yours. Make sure you respect people’s boundaries.

You only help with the expectation of something in return.

In some situations, you may find yourself only helping people because you expect to get something in return. While humans are in many ways soft-wired to act reciprocally, I don’t think this is the best attitude to go about helping people.

Most people don’t like to be helped by others who aren’t doing it genuinely. They may even find it insulting. When helping others, be careful not to do it out of ulterior motives, but instead because you have a real desire to help people become more happy and successful.

If you get something in return for your good deed – awesome. If you don’t, then the satisfaction of helping someone should be enough.

It’s a significant milestone to me, but more importantly it’s provided me with a lot of experience about what it means to build a following.

I’ve certainly learned a lot of important things over the past few years, and I still have a lot more learning to do as well. I hope to share at least some of what I’ve learned here in this post.

In many ways, I think these principles apply to anyone who is trying to build a following around anything – whether it’s promoting a band, or building a business, or recruiting people around a certain cause.

Most people won’t care about you.

When building a following of any kind, it’s an unfortunate and discomforting fact that most people will never give a damn about who you are or what you do.

That’s because we vary so much as individuals. We each have a different array of values, interests, and priorities, and many times those values, interests, and priorities don’t match up with other people.

You have a metal band? That’s great, but the truth is 90+% of music fans probably don’t care for metal.

Should that discourage you? Absolutely not. It’s a trend you are going to find in almost any niche, so don’t beat yourself up when most of the people you try to reach out to are apathetic toward you.

Usually it’s nothing personal. It’s often just a difference in character. Maybe what you do just isn’t their “thing.” Or other times people are just too busy being distracted by other stuff.

This principle is especially important to keep in mind when you are first starting out, since it may take awhile until you start noticing some positive feedback (or any feedback at all, for that matter).

A lot of people will actually like you.

Building a following takes time and patience, but I promise you that eventually you will start finding people who actually like what you do.

The truth is that despite how unique you may be, there are still many others out there who share your values and interests, and who will therefore appreciate what you bring to the table.

So often I come across people who have a fervent passion for something, but they don’t pursue it because they question whether anyone else will care. I’m here to tell you that, yes, you will find plenty of people who care – so long as you care – and you remain persistent in searching for the right people.

Once you start finding those people who like what you do, start actively listening to what they have to say about you. What is it that they like exactly? If you dedicate yourself to building off their feedback, your influence will continue to grow.

A few people will absolutely love you.

Over time while building a following, you will begin to come across that small percentage of people who absolutely love you and everything you do.

These individuals make up your “core tribe.” They hang onto every word you write or say, and they continue to come back to you for more. Often times they share your work with others, which is one of the most effective and organic ways of expanding your influence to new people – by word of mouth. The more you have other people creating a buzz around you, the less you have to promote yourself. And the truth is people always trust the word of a friend or family member more than they trust a random stranger who is trying to sell himself.

So despite these individuals being only a small minority of the visitors you get, they are easily your most valuable asset. They bring support and enthusiasm to your message that you can’t possibly create all by yourself. And in many ways, these people add tremendous value to the work that you do.

Every great message needs loyal supporters. And when you find people who care that much about you and your work, you should reciprocate and give back as much as possible. Treat them with the utmost of respect, and many of them will have your back for life. The benefits from maintaining these kinds of relationships is incalculable.

Some people will hate you.

While building a following you will eventually come across certain people who will criticize you or hate you for a variety of reasons.

It could be that you or your work represent something that they vehemently disagree with. Sometimes differences in values can create real conflict. It’s an unfortunate, but very real part of human nature.

Other times, a person may just be envious of your success and they’d rather see you fail so they can feel better about themselves. This kind of hating often stems from low self-esteem and insecurity – and it’s also pretty common.

The only way to successfully deal with “haters” is to ignore them and continue on despite them. If you really believe in yourself, your values, and your work, then you’re just going to have to persist forward regardless of what some people may think. All I ask is that you don’t be too surprised when met with this resistance.

The good and bad of building a following.

As you can tell, building a following isn’t always a completely pleasant experience. You will undoubtedly experience a lot of frustration and criticism, and it’s going to take some time, patience, and dedication before you start to see some traction with people who actually appreciate what you do.

I just wanted to write this post to get you more familiar with how things will probably break down as you reach out to more and more people. The distribution of these 4 categories (apathy, like, love, hate) will vary from person to person, but almost anyone who has ever built an influence has had to deal with each of these.

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This means our happiness and success largely depend on the relationships we build with others.

When building relationships on a day-to-day basis, we really only have two distinct choices we can make:

1. We can choose to build positive, meaningful, healthy, and productive relationships with the people we interact with.

2. Or we can choose to build negative, empty, toxic, and destructive relationships with the people we interact with.

Knowing how to maximize the positive relationships and minimize the negative relationships is key to living a happy and satisfying life.

Positive relationships encourage personal growth.

One benefit to positive relationships is that you encourage each other to grow and flourish. Friends like seeing friends succeed and achieve their goals. And most of the time, good friends are willing to help you in anyway they can if it means seeing their buddy be happy and successful.

Positive relationships give you support during tough times.

Another huge benefit to positive relationships is that they provide support during tough times. We all have our bad moments, whether it be health-related, money-related, or something else. Thankfully, having a supportive social circle is one of the best ways to stay strong, persist forward, and get a little bit of help when we need it.

Positive relationships enable you to collaborate and work together.

The more we get along with someone, the better we are at collaborating and working together. Human relationships thrive when individuals can combine their skills and talents, and successfully create something greater than the sum of their parts. This is the stuff that makes businesses and other social institutions work.

Positive relationships create feelings of pleasure and joy.

One of the more obvious benefits of positive relationships is that they make life more enjoyable. Good friends, family, and co-workers make life an overall more pleasant experience – we enjoy spending time with these people and we often share positive moments with them on a frequent basis. They provide that extra flavor to life that we can’t find by ourselves.

Positive relationships add more meaning to our life.

Having positive relationships in our life increases our sense of purpose and meaning. When we have a real, positive effect on someone else, we feel like we are making a significant difference in the world – and we are.

Positive relationships enrich our life story. They fulfill our need to belong in a community and they give us a stronger sense of identity. Without this sense of belonging, we can often feel isolated and disconnected with ourselves. But once we find our place in society, we become more comfortable in our own skin.

Positive relationships live on through other positive relationships.

The relationships we build have a much broader influence than just ourselves and our immediate social circle. They also influence people who we may never know exist. When you create a positive connection with someone else, that person is more motivated to make positive connections with other people. Our actions and relationships, therefore, are part of a much larger chain of events that are what influence society as a whole.

One of my favorite studies illustrates this phenomenon well: when we do acts of kindness, others are more likely to repeat that act of kindness toward another person. In many other ways, the relationships we build can influence how others build relationships in the future.

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