There's two great books by a man named W. Timothy Gallwey: 'The Inner Game of Work' and 'The Inner Game of Stress'.
In it, he mentions an exercise called "Transposing."
It consists of three questions that you can ask about others, as well as yourself:
What is ____ 1) thinking, 2) feeling, 3) wanting.
While that alone is extremely helpful, I've added some extra exercises that have helped me make it even more practical:
How To Transpose
1) Start With Self-Questioning
Identify:
- What you want
- The situation/scenario relevant to achieving what you want
- Who is relevant to getting you what you want in the relevant situation
Once the individual is identified:
2) Transpose
Ask what that person is:
- Thinking?
- Feeling?
- Wanting?
3) Get Practical Take-Aways
Knowing this:
- What would need to be true to fail to positively impact their experience?
- What would need to be true to fail to communicate to them in an effective way?
- What would need to be true to fail to make our relationship successful?
- What would need to be true to fail to address their biggest problem?
--
Obviously, the next step would be to take action.
Using Transposing on Yourself
Sometimes it's helpful to get as much of an outside perspective on ourselves that we possibly can. It can help cut through the confusion, and earn us a little clarity.
To do so:
1) See yourself, right now, as if you're looking down at you from the ceiling, or sky
With that visualized physical distance established, ask:
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- What am I wanting?
Ex: Right now I'm thinking about how to convey the value of this exercise effectively, I'm feeling a little uncertain about this particular example, and I'm wanting to get across how valuable this particular exercise has been for me
With your answers to that self-questioning, you can move into some variation of those "what would need to be true" questions to take action, if necessary:
- What would need to be true to fail to positively impact my experience?
- What would need to be true to fail to communicate in an effective way?
- What would need to be true to fail to make this more successful?
- What would need to be true to fail to address the biggest problem?
Making It Regular For Best Results
To make it part of your life instead of a cool once-and-never-again exercise:
- 1) Pick three people in your life that would be helpful to transpose on a daily, or weekly basis
- 2) Set up a daily or weekly reminder in your Calendar or Task app of your choice to transpose those three individuals
- 3) Use what you've learned to inform your approach to that person
Suggestions: Your partner, your boss, your mother or father, or anyone else that you need to have a harmonious relationship with.
Final Thoughts
As you might suspect, the mind-reading done here is an approximation.
But despite not having some mind scanning technology accessible to you, transposing can shift your perspective in a way that allows you to meet others where they are and want to be.
It can help you see outside of yourself, and assist in helping others in a way that you may not have been able to in the past. To put it simply: it can improve your relationships with others, and also with yourself.
I'd argue that that's enough to make it worth doing. Hopefully you also find some value in it.