Saturday, September 19, 2009

Assuming you don't know why

Every once in a while I'll catch myself suspecting someone of ulterior motives in their actions, and it's almost always in a negative way. Was that a back-handed compliment? Are they trying to point out a mistake I've made? Etc. Etc.

Over time I've come to realize that that's almost never the case. In fact the vast majority of what most other people do has very little to do with me personally. It's actually quite a self-centered point of view to think that it does.

So whenever I catch myself thinking this way, I always try to take a step back and assume I don't know why they're behaving that way. I think about what my intent would be making the same statement, or doing the same thing. And then assume that it's likely that someone else's intent would probably be the same or very similar to mine.

Sure, I've run into people with bad intent, and with motives I would never have, but most of the time I realize that I'm taking something personally when I shouldn't. And I've found that over time, it's been better to err on the side of considering other people's behavior generously than to do otherwise.

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