2,000 Percent Living Lesson Thirteen: Connect Better with Other People

A friend loves at all times,
And a brother is born for adversity.

— Proverbs 17:17 (NKJV)

Lesson Twelve describes how you can cleanse
your heart, become humbler, and receive
more of God’s directions by providing 2,000
percent solutions to the most difficult
problems affecting people who cannot help
themselves. In this lesson, I relate another
spiritually satisfying way to purify your heart,
to become humbler, and to receive more of
God’s directions: You need to approach all
those you come near with a heart filled with
fresh interest, warm gratitude, and a deep
desire to draw much closer to them.

When you approach each person with a
respectful, devoted servant’s heart as though
you were seeing and talking with God in
person, you will learn many things that God
wants you to know.

Aren’t you looking forward to finding out what
He has specially prepared just for you?
Anticipating soul-satisfying benefits from His
unexpected lessons makes a life in Christ
abundantly exciting and interesting to
anticipate and to experience.

Freshen Your Interest in All Those
You Haven’t Yet Met

Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ,
if any comfort of love,
if any fellowship of the Spirit,
if any affection and mercy,
fulfill my joy by being like-minded,
having the same love, being of one accord,
of one mind.
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition
or conceit,
but in lowliness of mind let each esteem
others better than himself.
Let each of you look out not only for his
own interests,
but also for the interests of others.

— Philippians 2:1-4 (NKJV)

Imagine that you are out walking and
unexpectedly see a celebrity you admire
sitting nearby. If the person is alone and
looks approachable, you will probably come
closer for a better look and you may even
say hello in hopes of starting a conversation.
Why would you either approach or speak to
the celebrity? It’s probably because you feel
irresistibly drawn to the person, much as
iron is attracted by a magnet.

Now imagine that you are walking someplace
else and see a poorly dressed person who is
not physically attractive. Even if the person is
alone and looks approachable, chances are that
you will simply pass by. At most, you might
smile. Why would you do so little? In this
case, it’s probably because nothing about the
person’s appearance attracts your interest.

Next, think about yourself. Does your
appearance perfectly reflect what you can do
to help others? If you are like me, you appear
to be a lot less helpful than you are. If that’s
the case, God has made you to be a surprise
gift to be unwrapped by those who
optimistically take the time to approach and
to become acquainted with you.

Let’s return to the circumstance of seeing a
celebrity you admire. Some people like to be
with celebrities because the experience
makes them feel more special and proud of
themselves. Such feelings pull you away from
the humility God wants for you.

In making this comparison of potential
reactions to two different people, my point
isn’t that you should never speak to
celebrities, but, rather, that you should
examine your reasons before doing so. For
instance, let’s assume the celebrity is (as many
are) very active in serving some important
need such as helping abused children. If your
interest and conversation focus on that work
and you only seek advice about how you can
help abused children, you can deepen your
appreciation for the plight of those who need
help and strengthen your humility through
becoming more determined to serve
selflessly.

Now, let’s take another look at the poorly
dressed person who is not physically
attractive. This time I want you to assume
that the person is higher in status than you
are, knows a lot more than you do, can do a
great deal to help you, and likes to help
people who approach humbly and offer to
be of service. Making these assumptions
about any person causes you to think and to
act as someone would who actually is lower
in social status than the other person and
who should always expect to serve that
person. After making those assumptions,
you would probably approach the poorly
dressed person who is not physically attractive
with an enthusiastic smile and an intention to
speak to, to learn from, and to help the person.

Have you ever met someone you expected to
learn from and yet you didn’t learn anything?
I haven’t. From those successful experiences,
I have discovered that merely reaching out for
help is enough to obtain important lessons. As
a result I believe that by seeking to learn
from everyone, you will.

Let’s look at the opportunity to learn from
others in another way. Did you ever wonder
why God made each of us to be so different?
Now think about the opposite circumstance:
Wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the same?
God created those differences so we can
delight in one another through appreciating
and gaining benefits from our differences. He
also wants us to be drawn closer to one
another through needing help and giving
assistance. If you want a practical example
of His plan, just think of how much easier it
is for people to wash one another’s feet,
rather than our own, something He did to set
an example for us.

Freshen Your Interest in
All Those You Have Already Met

A man who has friends
must himself be friendly,
But there is a friend
who sticks closer than a brother.

— Proverbs 18:24 (NKJV)

You probably have many relatives, friends,
neighbors, coworkers, fellow congregants,
and acquaintances whom you rarely contact.
If you are like a lot of people, your
interactions with people you know have
become narrower and narrower and briefer
and briefer. As a result, you have a lot of
predictable conversations, perhaps even
repetitive ones. Are you bored by some of
those relationships? If so, the other person
probably is too.

Before you decide that there’s little new to
be gained from closeness with the people
you know, realize that the responsibility for
eliminating any narrowness and
predictability in relationships starts with us,
not with others, because we can change what
we do and improve the relationships.

Let me tell you a story that explains what I
mean. One of my consulting clients headed a
gold-mining company. Based on studying his
company’s situation he decided that the
prospects for his company’s best gold mine
were limited: Gold prices were low and were
expected to stay that way, labor costs were
high, miners were striking for more money,
and the amount of ore yet to be mined
seemed limited based on examinations of ore
samples.

While attending a conference about the
software industry, my client was astonished
to learn about open-source software,
computer code for which all the details are
publicly available so that anyone can make
improvements. In the open-source software
industry, most such software is created by
programmers who are glad to share for free
with others what they develop. As a result,
such software is rapidly improved and
becomes much more useful than what a
typical software company can produce on
its own.

From hearing about these software
experiences, my client wondered how much
more gold could be found if his company’s
best mine was examined by all the world’s
experts. Because there wasn’t much work for
gold-mining geologists and other experts at
the time, my client’s company decided to
sponsor an online contest to attract expert
views by offering cash prizes for the best
ideas. By spending about $200,000 for
prizes, the contest yielded entries that led to
the discovery of over $2 billion in gold that
could be profitably extracted and processed.
The contest results were so exceptional that
today all major gold-mining companies seek
exploration ideas for their mines by using
the same type of contest.

However, that success is not the punch line of
my example for drawing closer to people you
know. To hold the competition, the client’s
company had to convert the mine’s data into
an easier to use electronic form. Just as soon
as that new format was available, the
company’s staff geologists located many of the
same excellent opportunities that the external
experts later did.

By upgrading the data, my client had
improved the way he talked to the people he
already knew by paying them the compliment
of giving them the best tools, ones he assumed
would be needed to attract the most highly
esteemed experts. In the process, my client
treated his colleagues as highly esteemed
experts for the first time, and they provided
great value. As a result, he learned that the
company’s geologists had many wonderful
perspectives they could share with him
that he had not learned about from them
before. Because of this experience, he became
much more interested in improving
information sources for his staff and carefully
listening to their views.

Relationships within the company’s
leadership as well as with the rest of the
company were enriched by this experience.
There is a parallel example of how
expectations create results that is observed in
the Pygmalion effect. Let me explain.
Researchers took a random group of average
students and told the teachers who would be
teaching them during the following school year
that some of the students were very bright,
high performers and that some of the
students weren’t very bright and did not do
well in school. When the researchers returned
to see how the students performed during the
next school year, they found that the average
students who were falsely labeled as bright,
high performers began to do better while the
average students who were falsely labeled as
not so bright, low performers did worse than
before. All that had changed was the
teacher’s expectation of what the students
could do, yet that changed expectation was
enough to affect performance positively or
negatively.

What are the lessons?

• Upgrade the assumptions you make about
and act on concerning people you know to
become at least as optimistic as the
assumptions I described in the previous
section concerning people you are eager to
meet.
• Consider how you could improve your
behavior, access to information and resources
you provide for the other person, and the
focus of your time spent together to
continually expand and enhance your
relationships in mutually satisfying ways.

Express Warm Gratitude to All
You Meet and Know

They risked their lives for me.
Not only I but all the churches
of the Gentiles are grateful to them.

— Romans 16:4 (NIV)

Simply attracting someone’s attention is
usually not enough reason for most people to
feel grateful. That’s a mistake. You should be
thankful because attention opens the door for
you to gain some of God’s pleasant surprises
from someone else and for you to help provide
some nice surprises for the other person.
When your ensuing conversation is based in
gratitude, benefits multiply because your
thankfulness cannot be hidden from others.
Your smile is wider and more genuine. Your
eyes twinkle in an endearing way. You cock
your head in ways that show you are paying
attention. The sound of your voice is richer.
The cadence of your speech is more varied
and interesting. Your intonation rises and
falls in more attractive ways. Your whole
body expresses barely contained joy.

How could anyone seeing and hearing you not
respond in kind? Your gratitude brings the
other person to a higher state of alertness and
animation. You will also seem more
trustworthy, encouraging more sharing of
feelings, experiences, and information. Since
you responded warmly to this sharing, the
other person will feel inspired to keep talking
longer in order to gain more pleasure from
seeing and hearing your joy. While the
conversation continues, the other person’s
opinion of you will increase. As that occurs,
the other person will feel more grateful to
know you and will seek you out more often
in the future.

If you would like to consider a model of how
this cycle of ever-increasing appeal works,
recall a time when you were attracted to
someone you wanted to date who seemed to
be interested in you.

Chances are that you could not get enough
of one another’s company and continually
found new things to share and to enjoy
together.

Telephone conversations late at night may
have gone on for hours. It was a great feeling,
wasn’t it? By changing your expectations, all of
your connections can be tinged with such
enjoyment, minus only the element of the
sexual excitement.

Act Continually from a Desire to Draw
Twenty Times Closer to Others

Let your gentleness be evident to all.
The Lord is near.

— Philippians 4:5 (NIV)

When you go to a party and meet new people,
you probably ask them where they live and
what kind of work they do in order to become
better acquainted. With that information in
mind, you probably talk about subjects that
would be of interest to those who live in those
places and do those kinds of work. If the
conversation goes well, you might ask about
other personal circumstances such as where
the person was born, whether a married
person has any children or grandchildren,
and where vacations are taken. If the
conversation continues, you will pick up
other details that people mention and learn
more.

If, for example, your primary purpose is to
find new clients for your insurance agency,
this conversational process is one that I can
recommend to you. Within a short period of
time, you’ll know when to mention that you
are an insurance agent and to ask about
having an opportunity to review the other
person’s insurance needs.

While most people aren’t insurance agents,
they employ a similar method to what the
agents do for becoming acquainted. Some
people even take courses to learn how to
gain lots of superficial details about other
people in a short amount of time. You can
always spot someone with that
orientation: They have circled the room
and gotten the key facts about everyone
long before the opportunity to meet others
ends.

While many such people are genuinely
friendly, some may also have hidden agendas
that they hope to advance by meeting new
people.

A better approach is to have no agenda but
God’s: for you to continually help and to learn
from everyone you meet. Each conversation
should become background for Godly thought
and caring in the future, and more ways to
serve and to be served.

Let’s go back to the party I mentioned
earlier and start to meet people again, but
with these new intentions. Your icebreaker
comments might include these questions:

• What’s the most helpful thing anyone has
ever done for you?
• What are you looking to accomplish now
that’s difficult?
• What do you wish everyone knew
about you?
• How has God blessed your life?
• What do you like to learn about other
people but don’t like to ask about?

• What have you learned lately that’s
helpful?
• What do you want to accomplish more of?
• What do you like to do with other people?
• What do your friends like best about you?
• How do you like to help other people?

• What parts of your life do you like to keep
private from others?
• When do you feel shy?
• What would you do if you could succeed in
accomplishing anything you tried?
• Who would you like to meet?
• What hidden talents do you have?

Naturally, people aren’t used to such genuine
indications of interest. To avoid making people
uncomfortable, you’ll have to gauge how open
the new person is to sharing views and
experiences with you. The kind of openness
that you find at a church potluck supper
won’t be matched at a gathering of
coworkers. Be careful that you don’t cause
people to feel they are being cross-examined
about private matters.

I’m sure that you have more and even better
questions than these. It’s a good idea to
develop your own list and to begin making
notes of what people tell you. If you are like
me, details soon escape your conscious
awareness unless you write them down.
Review what you learn later and notice what
you still need to find out about the person.
Then, think about how you can draw twenty
times closer to the person in ways that are
kind, considerate, and loving.

After you succeed in drawing twenty times
closer, upgrade your goals. Try to become
forty times closer and so forth. You’ll know
that you are making progress when the
other person can not only finish your
sentences for you, but can also anticipate
your next question while laughing happily
whenever the closeness that you have
developed is demonstrated.

Copyright 2010 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved.