Page 22 - Kindness - No Forward

Silver Rule #2
The Rule of Agendas

We Must Recognize the Other Person’s Agenda

“The supreme value is not the future but the present…what a man truly
wants he want now.”
-Octavia Paz

Just as everyone has a mental picture of themselves, everyone has two
kinds of agendas.

One of these is a mental list of what a person is doing at a particular time.

This is their secondary agenda. Secondary agendas are dynamic. They
change often. And each secondary agenda is part of a larger, primary
agenda. The primary agenda each of us carries exerts more control on us,
largely dictating why we do what we do in the big picture.

It is sometimes called our motivation.

If we could read another person’s agenda (“Here is what I am doing and
why I am doing it”), we could communicate and behave in a manner that
would support or complement that agenda. We’d know when to step in and
help, and when to get out of the way. We’d know when to joke around and
when to get serious. We’d know when to ask questions and when to give
advice.

But we don’t pass our agendas around. We just assume that everybody
else knows what our agendas are and will treat us accordingly.

Our agenda is what is important to us…right now.

Sometimes people help us with our agendas. Sometimes they get in our
way, causing conflict. In either case, their actions could be purely
accidental or based on personal insight. But they aren’t necessarily based
on knowledge of our agendas.