Have I raised your curiosity about exploring worldviews over the last several months?  Maybe I’ve stimulated your curiosity, but the potential for conflict makes you leery of talking to others.  If you’d like to know ways you can facilitate this type of discussion with someone else, read on.

 

Anticipating a Discussion

If you’ve decided to have a worldview discussion with another person, consider having this discussion with someone you know quite well.  Interestingly enough, having this discussion with someone you’re extremely close to, such as your spouse, may not be a great idea, especially if you have a history of disagreeing philosophically.  A good person to start with might be someone with the following attributes:  the person is trustworthy; the person likes and respects you; you believe the person shares some of your values, but not necessarily all of them.

 

Extend an Invitation

Ask the person if he or she would like to have this type of discussion with you.  Give him a definition of worldview.  If he’s never had this kind of discussion before, explain that you haven’t either, but you’d like to share with him, and learn from him.  State your objectives in having this discussion; those objectives might include clarifying your own worldviews; determining how a worldview influences the way you interact with the world; deciding which parts of your worldview are more important and less important; learning where your worldviews are complementary and where they collide; learning how to have this kind of discussion in a way that strengthens rather than hurts the relationship.

 

Agree on Shared Objectives

You will want to decide together if you want to discuss this topic in general, and then decide to focus on a particular area; or you may decide to limit the focus, such as talking about your worldviews on relationships.  You’ll also want to decide how much time you will allot to the first time you talk, and whether you’d like to talk regularly or periodically to further your learning about yourselves and each other.  After your first meeting, you may have a better idea of whether you’d like to continue the conversation.

 

Set Ground Rules

Once you agree to have this discussion, it’s helpful and wise to identify ground rules together; these are your understandings of how you want to treat each other, and how you might best deal with conflict or differences.  What will you do if someone gets defensive?  How can you point out this behavior without making the situation worse?  What if you don’t agree with each other?  How can you make sure you understand each other’s viewpoint without attacking the person’s position?  Reaching these understandings up front, agreeing to them, and making your best efforts to apply them are critical to a productive outcome and deeper relationship.

 

Use Process Checking

In case the discussion goes sideways, make a sincere and heartfelt agreement under your ground rules that you will both take responsibility to make a “process check”; I have friends who use the term “conversation emergency!” when they feel it’s essential for one to interrupt the other.  It’s a way to own up to your interruption, and also tells the person that you are interrupting him for something important.  Conversations that go sideways are usually those where one or both of you are angry or upset; where one person or the other becomes withdrawn or silent; where one or both of you begin to make personal attacks.  Then it’s time to “check your process.”  You may say that you’re uncomfortable with what’s happening; you may suggest you both take a look at your ground rules to see if you’re honoring them; you may want to make an “I” statement which means you own up to your reaction and talk about the other person’s behavior, rather than blaming the person or making him wrong.  For example, you may feel attacked but the other person doesn’t perceive he’s attacking you.  The point is not to get the person to agree that he is attacking you; instead, help him understand the type of behavior that is making you uncomfortable, and encourage him to find other ways to show his passion or commitment to his ideas.

 

Take Time to Debrief

Whether you have one conversation or several of them regarding your worldviews, take the time to discuss how the conversation went.  What did you each learn about yourselves and each other?  What worked well and what didn’t work so well?  What beliefs are you re-evaluating?  Which ideas were reinforced?  These discussions are a meaningful way to reflect on how you see yourself and your world.  Don’t miss the opportunity to savor every morsel of learning that you can.