Reading the Room

You make your reality, but what is already there? Pausing to take in what’s outside yourself can show you what you can bring from within yourself to it. It’s not necessarily about turning into the same and blending in.

Reading the room is essential for many reasons. You see what you’re getting yourself into. What is moving around you. How it’s going. What it is lacking. And what it is already overloaded with. This information is required to make an educated guess on what would be an appropriate or suitable way to behave at that time and place. Or if, instead, you shouldn’t even bother with it and head for the exit.

Listen to what is being said, but also hear what goes unsaid. You are no psychic with a 100% accuracy rate, but you might be able to correctly deduce a few things. Taking into account both words and actions, along with expressions and gestures that also communicate, and the context that would further give meaning to them. Much can be explicit, blatantly obvious and evident, but much can also be implicit, and take particular attentiveness. If you aspire to be good at this, you must try to not miss too many cues. 

It can be taxing, however, so you can give yourself permission to save it for certain occasions and/or only moderately do it in most of them. When you are talented or practice the skill, soon enough you’ll be fluent at it and it’ll come more effortlessly.

If you're looking to get along and belong, you can begin by deciding who you want to be (and accept the consequences of it). Somebody who shakes things up? Somebody who mediates? Somebody who alleviates? Somebody who accompanies? Somebody who enriches? Somebody who uplifts? Who? You can be (and do) all of these, at a given moment, if you can pull it off. But what you might want to avoid is being somebody so irritating that you become insufferable to most or all around.

What are the needs and the wants present and how can you contribute to those? Is there an elephant in the room that nobody speaks of but crave for somebody to? Is there slack to pick up after? What can you do to make it all better? 

And if not that, how do you seamlessly weave in to be a part of it?

CREDIT: AI-Generated Examples done on Leonardo.AI