The 3 Steps to Understanding Other People’s Actions

It’s been said that actions speak louder than words. For the most part this is true. But if you don’t understand what those actions mean, it doesn’t make a difference either way.

Understanding others’ actions must take place from the other person’s point of view. Every action someone does is about that person, not you. This is the big underlying rule you need to know for these steps.

So, keeping this rule in mind, here are the three steps.

1. Take yourself out of the situation and let go of your reaction

One of first things people usually notice when someone does something is how it affects them. Does their action make you feel happier, sadder or any other kind of emotion? How you respond and feel isn’t something you can change.

What you can do is acknowledge your reaction and move on to focus on the action itself. Because it is so easy to get lost in your response, you often lose sight of what the person is doing, saying, or behaving. If you can’t move past your reaction, you’ll never really understand other people’s actions.

2. What is their motivation?

Once you take yourself out of the situation, you can analyse their motivation. Every action and behaviour have some sort of goal and intent behind it. If you look closely enough, you’ll be able to figure it out.

Look at it from that person’s point of view. Why would someone say or do what they did? Perhaps they are satisfying their own egos or maybe they are doing something out of a deep-rooted insecurity.

Many times, people do or say something to give off an impression. I often will take the person’s action and imagine myself doing it. Then I try to figure out the reason why I would say or do it.

Just remember that if someone says something that causes a big emotional response in you such as anger, it might not be their intent. I’ve had people who have angered me over things they’ve said, and it often comes from their own insecurities rather than any attempt to cause me harm.

Of course, there are those whose intent is to get emotional responses from you. You just must evaluate the situations as they arise and make your best judgments. With practice, this becomes easier.

3. What was their desired outcome?

Sometimes what people intend to do and what happens are two different things. For example, if a girl is trying to attract a man, but does it poorly she can creep him out and drive him away. Her desired outcome was to attract him, but the actual outcome was to repel him. It might be easy for some people to misinterpret her actions as intentionally trying to be creepy.

Understanding Actions

Using this system, I’ve been better able to understand people’s actions more. It’s not always perfect, but then again, no system for understanding people works 100% of the time. At least next time someone says you can’t do something or critiques your life goals you’ll have a better understanding of it, and you’ll know it is more about them than IT IS ABOUT YOU!

Credit: Steve Bloom.

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