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 ConflictZen.com.