Be Careful! What You Heard May Not Be What Was Said

We humans have a bad tendency to take things others say and do personally, or rather, the wrong way. There’s an Alka-Seltzer commercial currently in rotation on TV that wonderfully illustrates this tendency of ours: Picture a mother standing over the kitchen sink and a father reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. Their teenage daughter comes running in all excited. We are then alerted to what the daughter actually says: “I just got accepted into one of the best colleges in the nation!” Mom jumps up and down with daughter-- all excited-- while Dad’s face drops. We’re then alerted to what Dad actually heard his daughter say: “I got accepted into one of the most expensive colleges in the nation!”

The problem presented here is all about interpretation. Daughter said one thing and Dad heard something different. His brain put a spin on what his daughter actually said and so Dad heard what he wanted to hear, not what was actually said. As a result of Dad’s interpretive hearing, he needs an Alka-Seltzer.

It may seem strange to think Dad wanted to hear that his daughter had been accepted into one of the most expensive schools, but it all depends on Dad’s mental frame of mind. Some of us have victim mentalities. We expect the worst at every moment. We sniff-out all of the bad that we possibly can and we create problems out of almost nothing. In some ways we are like Jesus. He multiplied the loaves from practically nothing and we multiply our misery from practically nothing. Seems Jesus was a good deal smarter than we are, though! He didn’t have a victim mentality, despite all of the bad things that happened to him.

People who have developed victim mentalities never honesty hear what anyone else has to say. Everything they hear is about them because victims think the whole world rotates around them—and, of course, the whole world is out to get them. Perpetual victims refuse to believe that anyone is really on their side. Family, friends, coworkers, store clerks, motorists, the sun and moon, even dogs and cats are against them. It’s no wonder then that so many people with victim mentalities misinterpret what they hear to their own detriment. As long as someone clings to a victim mentality, he or she will be like the Dad in the Alka-Seltzer commercial—always hearing what he or she expects to hear and never truly hearing what was said.

The solution to this problem is simple, but not easy. First, a person has to be willing to stop playing the victim. They need to wake up to the fact that they are not the center of the universe and that almost no one even notices that they exist. So they have no real reason to believe anyone is out to get them. Bad things simply happen to everyone and not just to them. Second, they need to reinterpret everything they hear. All this requires is asking themselves “What else could this person have meant by what they said or did?” There are two sides to everything—at least two. There is no one and only correct interpretation. If we have taken something negatively, we need to consider that there are other possible interpretations of what was said or done.

The very best way of clearing things up is to ask the person in question right on the spot: “What did you mean by that?” More times than not we will learn that our initial interpretation was wrong. We will then be relieved to know that we were not being personally attacked in any way. Both parties will breathe easier because we will have averted a problem by not creating one out of nothing.

Remember, our minds filter words and actions to make them correspond to what we believe about ourselves. If we believe we are worthless and develop victim mentalities, everything we hear or experience will be filtered through that victim lens. Let’s try flipping the filters in our minds from victim to healthy; from “I hear what I choose to hear” to “I hear what is actually said.” And let’s remember to question ourselves and others when we’re not sure, so we can remain peaceful and allow our souls to shine—without any need for Alka-Seltzer!