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How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

Book by David Brooks · 4 quotes · Understanding, Empathy, Relationships

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How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen Quotes

“The second crucial thing I learned, especially from the authors of Crucial Conversations, is that every conversation takes place on two levels: the official conversation and the actual conversation. The official conversation is represented by the words we say about whatever topic we are nominally discussing: politics, economics, workplace issues—whatever. The actual conversation occurs in the ebb and flow of underlying emotions that get transmitted as we talk. With every comment you are either making me feel a little more safe or a little more threatened. With every comment I am showing you either respect or disrespect. With every comment we are each revealing something about our intentions: Here is why I am telling you this. Here is why this is important to me. It is the volley of these underlying emotions that will determine the success or failure of the conversation.”

EmotionsSafetyTopicsConversationsIntentionsThreatsDiscussionsEmotional SafetyCrucial Conversations
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“Repressing my own feelings became my default mode for moving through the world. I suppose I was driven by the usual causes: fear of intimacy; an intuition that if I really let my feelings flow, I wouldn't like what bubbled up; a fear of vulnerability; and a general social ineptitude.”

FeelingsEmotionsVulnerabilityRepressionSocial AwkwardnessRepressed FeelingsFear Of Intimacy
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“As the neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett writes in her book How Emotions Are Made, “You may think that in everyday life, the things you see and hear influence what you feel, but it’s mostly the other way around: What you feel alters your sight and hearing.” People who are scared take in a scene differently. Our ears, for example, immediately adjust to focus on high and low frequencies—a scream or a growl—rather than midrange frequencies, which include normal human speech. Anxiety narrows our attention and diminishes our peripheral vision. A feeling of happiness, by contrast, widens our peripheral vision. A person who feels safe because of the reliable and empathetic presence of others will see the world as a wider, more open, and happier place. The people who practice effective empathy have suffered in ways that give them understanding and credibility.”

HappinessInfluenceAnxietyPerceptionEmpathyEmotionsSafetySubjectivity
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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