When you work with a great team - a team that comprises of people that share a heart you recognize and understand, people who share the same path to the common goal with the same ideals as you do, you come across an exchange of thoughts that can inspire, be thought provoking or simply question observations!
During one of these "vacation" moments on a normal working day, we sat noticing how some people are very warm and social and others seem to come across rather cold. Is this characteristic an in built one or does experience, however insignificant affect the way people come across?
There are a bunch of people in my very own world, that when met for the first time, come across cold. They are quiet, barely smile, listen more than talk and can be the most comfortable person in a really awkward silence. It doesn't perturb them,a s to how they are perceived or how they come across as intimidating and unwelcoming. If they are lucky, the person probably was better off not being discovered, but if they are unlucky, they just shut off an extremely worthy person and a pleasant experience. Is this calm, composed, collected composure that comes across as cold a defense mechanism? Most of these people give me one reason to their method - "but I don't know the person, how can I just open up?"
So, then, how do you have people from the opposite spectrum just open up, make conversations - meaningful, informative, stranger to acquaintance converting or just ending in the negative. Aren't people from that spectrum also in the "I-don't-Know-the-person" phase?
I came to understand that people in the first group - have a "guilty unless proven innocent" approach and the ones on the other side have a "innocent until proven guilty" approach. There is the question of trust and there is also a sense of worthiness. It is not necessary that a person who is cold feels that the person in front of them is not worthy of knowing him/her or that a warm person is trying to find an opportunity to show their worth to the other. But one's own idea of self worth does play a major part in addition to one's take on trust.
What makes one belong to either? Am not sure. But I do know, that when you meet someone for the first time and you let yourself be the way you are, you are in a vulnerable spot, susceptible to another accepting you or trashing you for who they perceive you to be. You may be welcoming or unwelcoming, warm or cold - neither guarantees "protection" from not being accepted. Why is acceptance so important? Why is it that when we meet someone for the first time, we want to be "liked"? Why do we gauge anyone we meet and decide if we like them or not? They are who they are, the way they are and that's who they have shaped themselves to be. Why is it hard to embrace the original format and let them see you for who you are - all in the first instance? That kind of flexibility in thought takes courage. It also takes a lot of character to sustain the flexibility despite all the bad experiences it may bring along. It's not only hard to embrace another person in their original format in entirety, it's hard to bare oneself in entirety as well.
Warm or cold - good intention is important. No matter how non-judging we all want to be, we all judge each other. It is the action you take, based on the judgement, that really counts!
