From Like to Liking - James Rolph

Primary Filters and Social Confidence

In working with people who have issues of social confidence, I have noticed an interesting common denominator - people who lack social confidence tend to have some degree of preoccupation with whether people 'like' them or not.

One way of thinking about this is that 'like/dislike' is a major sorting filter for how some people organise their reality. For people with more social confidence, this filter is of considerably less significance and is often pretty much absent altogether.

So how is it this filter can work against you?

Have you ever noticed that 'to like' is one of those verbs that freezes time and process? When someone says they like something or someone they are usually saying that they have made a judgment - an abstraction out of time that remains constant unless re-evaluated.

Making a judgment like 'Bob likes me' or 'Bob doesn't like me' takes away choices by abstracting out of time at a big chunk size (detail deleted), and making me the passive object in a perceived judgment - this is really not very empowering!

Or to put it another way, I can never really know whether someone likes me or not - at best I can try to 'mind read'. And what can I do with such a mind read? Does it help me interact effectively with that person, or does it just distract me from paying attention to how they are really responding to me in that moment?

During an interaction, by paying attention at a dynamic level, people can do things to change the responses they are getting. To do this requires operating through more dynamic filters. The simplest shift one can make is to switch from filtering by 'like/dislike' to filtering by 'liking/disliking' (present continuous tense). This abstraction retains the feature of time and process - it is dynamic and recognises the ever-changing right now. And it can always go somewhere! Somewhere open to influence from you!

So, if you used to worry about whether people liked or disliked you, you can now start thinking in terms of how you are affecting (present continuous tense) them and how they are responding to you in any given moment. And enjoy noticing how many more choices this gives you! In making this shift you are always able to learn from what you are doing and do something different next time (the next moment or the next time you meet that person). And, of course, it is often quite exciting to notice how much fun this can be - particularly if you are the kind of person who enjoys learning and doing things better and better. All in all a different kind of experience altogether!