Have you ever wondered why you find yourself warming to certain people, while others leave you feeling less inclined to spend time in their company?
The other day, I found myself thinking about an old man I knew growing up – one of those people everybody seemed to know, and who would talk to just about anyone. I’d bump into him occasionally on buses and trains over the years. To this day, I don’t know his name, but I remember he resembled George Harrison from The Beatles.
Whether he was speaking to me or somebody else, he was always calm, engaging, and unbothered. Sometimes he’d chat away, while other times he’d give you a nod, and that was that.
There was something in the way he carried himself – an unimposing, easy charm – and he seemed to embody the idea of live and let live.To my knowledge, he never spoke about personal matters, nor did he ask about anyone else’s. He was just easy to be around, and content to let people be as they were.
He came to mind after I’d watched some interviews with Anne Carson, the Canadian writer who won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.
There’s something fascinating about the way Carson interacts with people. She’s courteous, attentive, and respectful, but doesn’t seem to feel obliged to entertain whoever is interviewing her. She doesn’t appear to feel the need to explain herself or reveal more than she feels is necessary.
What’s also admirable is that she seems to extend the same freedom to others. She allows people to be themselves without expecting them to behave or respond in any particular way.
On that note, a friend and I were talking about how people could be more themselves without worrying so much about what others think.
British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has explored similar themes in interviews. During one conversation, he admitted that he wasn’t all that interested in self-knowledge. That might sound strange coming from a psychoanalyst, but his concern is that we can become so preoccupied with understanding ourselves that it interferes with the experience of living. When asked how he approached life, Phillips replied, “I live by inclination and by affection and by love and by liking.”
It’s an interesting question because we can become so concerned with how others perceive us that we start monitoring almost everything we say and do.
You might be enjoying a conversation, for example, until you begin wondering whether you’ve said something foolish, whether you’re interesting enough, or whether the other person likes you. Suddenly, you’re paying more attention to how you’re coming across than to the conversation itself.
But the more we worry about how others perceive us, the less attention we have for the things we enjoy and the people we spend time with. We can still care about what others think, especially those we respect and love, without allowing their opinions to occupy so much of our attention.
But coming back to that discussion with my friend, a good place to start is by noticing when we’re trying to manage how others see us.
For example, we might feel we have to be a certain way to impress somebody or gain their approval, and end up explaining ourselves far more than we need to. In those moments, it can be useful to ask whether we’re expressing ourselves naturally or performing to get the response we’d like from the other person.
The same goes for saying no to something we’d prefer not to do. We can be polite without offering a lengthy explanation or feeling responsible for whether the other person approves. This can feel uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re used to saying yes to people or trying to keep everyone happy. But it’s reasonable to decline something you don’t want to do – you can still be respectful and leave things as they are.
The other person might feel disappointed, or they might not give it another thought. Either way, you don’t have to take responsibility for their reaction every time.
Most of us want to be liked and understood, especially by people close to us, and there’s good reason to listen when someone raises a valid criticism of something we’ve said or done.
But we might benefit from becoming more comfortable with the possibility that someone will misunderstand us or simply not warm to us, without feeling we have to change their mind.
When I think about that old man I used to know and Anne Carson, what strikes me is how little they seem to expect from others. They don’t seem to need people to behave a certain way for their benefit, and neither feels obliged to put on a performance in return.
We don’t need to imitate either of them, but there’s something to learn from the way they relate to others. We can begin by allowing people to form their own impressions of us, without always feeling the need to do something about it.
