Looking at Things in a Different Way

John Gray is a relationship counselor, and author of the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus books. His philosophy is based on the premise that in any relationship, the most important thing we can do is accept and acknowledge each other's differences. In most cases, that means learning to look at things differently. The strength of this concept was brought home to Gray under tragic circumstances.

"Several years ago, my father was found dead in the trunk of his car," he says. "He had picked up a hitchhiker who robbed him and left him in the trunk. He died of heat asphyxiation. For some reason, even though the police had been notified three times about an abandoned car on the highway, the message was not clear and they arrived too late to save him.

"My brothers and I went to Texas where it happened. I was completely devastated; I felt that in order to fully understand what happened to my father, I needed to get inside the trunk myself. I did, and my brothers closed the lid. I could see how my father had struggled to escape. I could see the marks where he had banged on the roof of the trunk. He found a screwdriver and tried to pry the lid open, but he couldn't. He was able to pry the back light free to let in some air.

"While I was in the trunk, I stuck my hand out through the hole where the back light had been. When I pulled my hand back in, one of my brothers said, 'Why don't you see if you can reach your arm through and push the release button?' And I did. I pushed the button and the trunk opened. Everything stopped in that moment. I had never thought to try that. Obviously, my father had not thought of it either. If he had, he could have gotten out of the trunk.

"I realized later that neither he nor I thought of it because when we were in the trunk, we were thinking about how to get out of the trunk, not how to get in. There can be no clearer example of the value of looking for a different point of view. So many people are stuck in their trunks—stuck in their ways of thinking and their ways of doing things. We need to hear other people's points of view, and we need to give our own. Because sometimes, just by looking at something in a different way, we can unlock that trunk so that we can come out and open our hearts."

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation—or a relationship.

—Deborah Tannen,
writer