Have you ever been in a position where you don’t know how to feel about a situation? Why not try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes?

How easy was it for you to do so? It wasn’t easy for me.

Some people are able to channel their thoughts and feelings with ease, able to change how they think and feel with a snap of a finger; however, for other people, you really have to dig deep, to look deeply into their eyes and uncover their soul one piece at a time. You learn their past, their values, their view of the world, and hopefully, you learn to accept it.

And that’s the easy part—the hard part is using that new knowledge of someone’s mind and soul in order to begin to understand not only the person but the way in which they see the world and thereby make decisions.

To really get into their shoes, you need to try and see the world through their eyes. Start off with yourself; how do you think they would see you? What would they notice first? Your eyes? Your smile? Your personality? Your past history? Would they look at you with love or hate?

Open your eyes as theirs—what do you think they see? Would they see the Earth’s flowers as a beautiful creation that smell divine or do they see them as just another organism in this world? Would they walk passed them without blinking an eye or would they take their time and envelop themselves with the beauty of it all?

Putting yourself into these simple situations as another person can tell you a lot about how that other person sees the world. How they make decisions. How they react to situations. And the reasons why they behave, speak, and think as they do. From there, you’ll be able to understand the situation occurring between you two better and be able to work through it with ease.

It seems so hard to be able to put yourself in those situations because each person has had a different upbringing; each person has had thousands of choices to make and there is no way that each choice would be the exact same as the next person.

It even differs with family and friends—just find a friend or family member and have them write down “heads” and “tails” twenty times on a piece of paper in whatever order you both choose, and you do the same.

Then, compare the results. See if they are in the exact same order—there is a 50/50 chance of the results being the same every time, but the chances of them all being the same is highly unlikely.

Even small differences as this demonstrate the varying ways in which all humans think and perceive the world and its situations.

So, the next time you are put into a positon where you don’t understand where a person is coming from, remember that their mind differs from yours. You don’t necessarily have to agree, but it’s important to step into each other’s shoes in order to understand the other person and support them no matter what.

You are each your own person with your own minds, and that’s OK—everyone has the right to think differently. So continue living life from your perspective as long as you remember to understand others.