Seeking To Understand The “Why” Behind A Person To Develop The Relationship

I have often heard people say that people like me must simply be born with the mentality that being compassionate and caring for others is the right thing to do as it is somehow engrained into us when we were born. But again, that makes me want to remind people on how everyone is defined by the journey they have experienced in life. Others could be born at the exact date and time as me, but the decisions they take can lead them to become a completely different person. You should always seek to understand why people are the way they are if you are trying to develop a deeper relationship with my personality type. In my opinion, that is the real key to opening the doors and here is a personal example for myself.

There have been a lot of life incidents as a child I experienced that made me want to help people. One key example was in elementary school. Who hasn’t heard of the school bully stories right? Well, it just happened that I was one of those kids that got bullied. There was a day where I was outside with some classmates and this older student with an anger issue comes up to me. He was easily about three times my size and it seemed like he simply wanted to pick on smaller people. While everyone around me was scared and shaken up, I kind of just naively stood there in a friendly way without fear as he walked by with his macho attitude. What happened eventually is that he grabbed me by the throat and held me up in the air as I pretty much dangled in his hand. The look in his eyes was like something out of a cartoon when the villains have control of a protagonist while taking pleasure in their pain.

To me, there was nothing I could do to get out of it given his sheer size and strength over me. Therefore, my thought was to simply not squirm or yell as I felt it would give him the satisfaction to continue if he knew what he was doing was effecting me. Eventually, he got bored and did let go after quite a bit of time. That wasn’t the main thing I took away from this experience though. As I was dangling in the air I saw my classmates who were simply standing around. No one bothered to come up to try and help me. Some even just ran away from the incident out of fear. Granted it is understandable as we were all like little kids and this person was a pretty large teenager type of figure.

But to me, it made me think how in situations like those standing around and watching a person get tormented is wrong. Especially if you can do something about it. In my mind at the time I was even thinking “There is like five of you and one of him. Why didn’t anyone help?” To know that even in that situation there are so many people in life who wouldn’t do anything I simply didn’t want to be one of those people as I would have rather helped in some way. If the situation was reversed where I was the observer, even if it meant the bully would come after me I still would have at least done something if it meant protecting an innocent person. Understanding the pain too makes me not want others to experience it.

This story actually continued which further developed my compassion. As it turned out, this bully had a lot of anger problems and for whatever reason he was suspended or transferred to a different school. As I grew up and was in a higher grade I saw this individual again. This time he was just visiting the school and was talking to one of his old teachers. I was able to hear some of the discussion and how he was confessing that he had such anger problems before.

I also then heard him talking about his relationship with his parents and it didn’t sound too good. In many ways, it was like he was being bullied by them. While before I pictured this guy as simply a born “bad guy” like you see on TV, hearing this made me understand better as to why he was the way he was. In a way, it made me feel compassionate for his situation.

It taught me not to immediately judge others too despite what they may be showing at face value. Because like this bully, there has to be an underlying reason why they are like that. In my mind, if he had someone to talk to about what was happening in his life he would have probably turned things around faster.

This is just one of many life events of course. But think of it like those social experiments that many people do. For example, giving a poor guy free money only to be surprised to see him give a lot of the money to another poor guy. From what I gather, it’s like the saying of a person who knows what it is like to fall down are most likely to be the ones who give you a hand to get back up.

With this note too, for you all who are trying to understand a person with a personality like mine you can probably guess a lot about their life history based on the deeds that they do on a regular basis. While it doesn’t pinpoint exactly what those experiences were, it should give you a foundation on what are the potential struggles they went through in life as a way to break the ice and to relate faster with them.

That is the best way to connect with a person that has my personality type I feel. If they reveal even a bit about these details too, use that as an opportunity to learn more. Like with my example, if someone naturally told me a story about them being bullied and how they persevered through it you bet that will cause me to gravitate towards them and wanting to take initiative to see how I can help if needed.

That is actually a reason a person like me wouldn’t necessarily want to just throw that information out there bluntly on the first day. I hate to say it, but in some ways it’s almost like people can take advantage of me in every way with details like those as the natural assumption is if the person has been through those experiences just like you then they should be just like you in many ways right? Of course, through life experience I know that is not necessarily always the case.

Again, I feel this is the real way to truly relate and connect with a deep thinker like myself. It’s not about what you do per se, but rather your ability to understand the underlying reasons “why” they do the things they do. If you genuinely connect, your actions in-turn should align with the same values that motivates them as well. Always seek to understand the “Why.”

You may be asking “How the heck are you going to get someone to reveal such a personal thing like that?” The main thing is you shouldn’t be trying to force this out of a person. Instead, make it more of a priority where your goal in seeking to understand their “Why’s” in life are more important than say figuring out surface level details only such as what their favourite food is to try and build the relationship.

Or as an example, if the person does reveal to you about food choices in a lot of cases finding out the “why” can reveal a lot. Example, a person is always only ordering all these vegetables. As I dive further I found out that they are a vegetarian. Going even further, I learn it wasn’t for religious reasons but rather a personal choice. Continuing in trying to understand the “why” I learned that they had a family member pass away from eating unhealthy stuff every day and so they made a choice in life to not want to live like that and is passionate about helping others eat healthy too.

By understanding this “why” I have unlocked so much depth about the person and potential ways on how I can genuinely connect while being a positive support in their life. Now whether or not I can offer that support naturally and organically is another question. It’s one of the things I try to discover as we build relationships because we all have different strengths and weaknesses.

Obviously this doesn’t mean you ask things like “Hey, why do you breathe air?” In many ways, just focusing on learning about the person’s “why’s” is like the efficient and natural method of getting to know a deep thinker with a reserved personality.