5 reasons to communicate with people who are different from you

In this article, Harvey Deutschendorf will talk about the benefits of communicating with people who are different from you. If your motto is “no new friends,” it’s time to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone . It's worth it.

All of us, one way or another, strive for a comfort zone, and one of the easiest ways to stay in it is to spend time with people who are like ourselves.

Such people agree with us, think, like us, their point of view on problems is similar to ours. At first it may seem that all this makes our life easier, but there is also a flip side of the coin.
')
Spending time only with people like us, we do not grow, and although we may be less comfortable with people who are different from us, we are developing next to them.

The following five aspects, presented to your attention, will allow you to realize the benefits of communicating with people who differ from you:

1. Your self-consciousness will expand, and it will be easier for you to accept other people.

Being surrounded by those who think differently from us, we begin to understand ourselves better. We are better aware of the reason why we chose to be who we are and think the way we think. We gradually understand that the views of different people on the same things may not coincide. We begin to avoid patterns of thinking in which "we" are opposed to "them", "right" - "wrong." (We recommend reading a helpful article on how to develop "dynamic thinking . " )

2. Your thinking will become more critical.

People who are different from us, thus challenging our way of thinking, our sensations and what we consider the norm. We can be mistaken and look at things from a limited point of view. Communicating with other people who see the world differently will help us realize that there are many completely different points of view, that everyone has their own reasons to think so and not otherwise. This awareness will help us to easily change our own ideas about what is happening, if we find that an alien point of view is more meaningful than our own.

3. You can enjoy the talents of others.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Someone may well see the situation as a whole, but it’s not good to navigate in details because there is not enough patience, or simply interest. This person will succeed significantly if someone in his or her closest circle is well versed in the details. Such a person will help the first to learn to think about the consequences of their actions, while the one who is used to considering the situation completely, will help the second not to get bogged down in details.

4. You will make better decisions.

If you are surrounded by people who are able to look at situations from different points of view, this will help you get a more complete and clear picture of what is happening. Based on this, you can make more informed decisions .

Abraham Lincoln was well known for recruiting people into the government who thought completely differently from himself. While many would see it as a threat, Lincoln understood that some areas of knowledge were not familiar to him, and he needed people who were strong in these areas. He formed a strong, diverse team that could rarely be taken by surprise, because everyone was involved in his own business and was not sprayed.

5. Your life will become more interesting and rich.

Being surrounded by those with whom we feel comfortable, we can become boring, lethargic, lose creative potential. Only difficulties support in us the life force and the desire to act, revealing a completely new and exciting world in which we have the opportunity to think and enjoy life.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - The secret about how to do everything on time.

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult