Overheard in the grocery shopping line at the end of a workday:

Woman 1 to Woman 2: You wear red a lot, you know that?

Woman 2: No, I don’t.

Woman 1: Sure you do!

Woman 2: No. I. Don’t. I only have two red suits and I only wear them every few weeks.

Woman 1: Well, I must notice you wearing them on those days, I guess.

I loved this conversation because I hear versions of it all the time – usually a tad more tense, though – in workplace mediations.

Woman 1 made a classic perceptual mistake: She confused her experience of a person with the totality of that person (or in this case, that person’s clothing choices). She then concluded her experience must be the complete reality.

Conflict Zen® by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.