Something that comes up from time to time in my practice is someone asking for information about someone else. It usually happens when there is a romantic breakup, and occasionally if they’ve just met someone. The questions are usually around wanting to know if the other person feels the same way, if there is a chance of getting back together, or wanting to know how the other person feels about what is going on. Effectively they want to know what’s going on in the other person’s head or heart.
As a coach and practitioner trying to help people through challenging situations in which they would like more clarity, this is dicey territory for me. For one, I feel my job is to help you get clarity around what is going on in your own head and heart. Personally, I have a hard enough time with my own self, never mind trying to figure someone else out. I personally feel it is more empowering to understand our own role in a relationship, and how we can use that relationship with another to better understand ourselves, which can then improve our relationships with others as well as with ourselves. The part that makes me uncomfortable is being asked to effectively peer into someone’s psyche without their permission. That feels pretty invasive to me, and quite honestly, I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me, so I don’t do that to other people.
Imagine my surprise when I caught myself reaching for my pendulum to do just that!
As some of you may know, I and my significant other, Steve, are in the process of selling his house. If you have ever bought or sold a house, you know what a totally stressful situation this can be. Part of our stress is coming from not being able to talk directly with the buyer, and having to communicate through two sets of realtors and lawyers. It’s like a high stakes game of Telephone; you have no idea if what you said is going to morph into something that you didn’t mean, and you can’t be sure that the information you are getting was how it was originally delivered. Talk about piling obscurity onto obscurity!
So when we got some information with what we felt was an unreasonable, we went straight to DEFCON 1. It felt to me like we were being jerked around, and that they had some hidden agenda when we were trying to be as transparent as possible in order to keep the process moving smoothly. After that, all we could think about were what options we had and the different situations and scenarios that we would have to deal with depending upon what option we chose to move forward with. I somehow got it into my head that if I knew what their goal was for making that stipulation, then I would be able to respond appropriately. Were they getting cold feet, and wanted out? I wanted to know. Of course I was completely unaware of how important it was becoming to me to know what the buyer was thinking until I reached for my pendulum. Luckily I stopped myself in good time, but it really caused me to stop and think about what the heck I was doing and why.
Why was it so important to me to know what was going on in someone else’s mind?
My first thought was “So I would have a better idea of how to respond.” Okay, but why is that important? “Because I haven’t been in this position before and have no idea what will happen or what to do, and I want to minimize any risk to the sale.”
That’s when it hit me. It’s about not knowing. It’s about uncertainty. And how desperately uncomfortable it can be in the unknown and being uncertain, especially when it’s high stakes like selling a house, or ending a romantic relationship. I needed to find out what was going on in someone else’s head so I could turn an unknown quantity into a known quantity. Basically I was way outside my comfort zone and I was trying to get back in.
The irony of this particular situation is that Steve is always talking about risk versus uncertainty, how often the two are confused, and the impossibility of managing uncertainty. And there I was, trying to manage uncertainty thinking it was risk. I almost laughed at that point.
He explained it like this. Risk is quantifiable and manageable with a known set of outcomes. In this case, if we decide to not agree to the stipulation, the set of possible outcomes could be: 1. the buyers accept that we will not agree to their stipulation and continue with the sale, 2. the buyers ask us to reduce the price, 3. the buyers ask us for an equivalent guarantee, 4. the buyers rescind their offer and back out of the sale. With the possible outcomes clearly stated, we can then determine if we are okay enough with any of those possible outcomes. The more we are okay with the outcomes, the less risky it is for us to strike out the clause.
Uncertainty can’t be quantified or measured. What was going on in the buyer’s mind was completely unknown to us, so there was no way to determine the possible outcomes. With no possible outcomes, there was nothing we could manage. With nothing you could manage in a highly emotional situation, the feeling of being completely in the dark and out of control can be overwhelming. Or as Steve succinctly put it, “If I focus on the buyer, I’ll go crazy!”
It really isn’t the unknown itself that is causing us to go crazy, but our need to have everything known, in order to feel in control; to feel safe. By focusing on wanting to know the unknowable (what is going on in someone else’s mind) we are effectively keeping ourselves in a constant state of turmoil, needing to control what we can’t possibly control: anything outside of ourselves.
When you get right down to it, there is really nothing you can do about how someone else thinks or feels, wondering or worrying about it, or thinking that you would be okay as long as you knew, will just drive you crazy. The only thing you can do is see what your possible choices are, what the outcomes might be, and work with that. Then the unknown, uncertainty, doesn’t feel quite as scary.
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