There’s always more than one explanation for why people do what they do. Often we are all too quick to assume we know the reason behind someone’s behaviour based on how we ourselves would choose to react and respond. The way you choose to respond may be right for you, however, it doesn’t automatically make it the right or best response for others and their situation. You may be calm where others are scared. You may have a plan where others feel stuck. You may have support where others are all alone.
Take a moment to ask yourself:
How might your attitudes and beliefs be causing you to jump to assumptions or unfairly judge others?
What could be one, or two or three other reasons that could possibly explain the behaviour you’re seeing in others?
In what ways could you offer assistance to someone or seek to understand their situation before you dismiss their needs?
There are a lot of new decisions we have been faced with and will be required to make over the coming weeks. We each have our own criteria for how we make decisions so when we see someone else doing something different to what we’re doing we can be quick to judge them because we may not understand what led them to make that choice. The assumptions we make about others choices and decisions can lead to misunderstandings, intolerance and adds to the fear and panic currently present.
Before we judge someone else perhaps we should take a step back and seek to understand their situation and perhaps offer assistance and support. Even though we’re isolating ourselves further from each other it does not mean we need to think less about others. The way through this is together.
In exploring the questions above you will begin to understand more about yourself and how your attitudes and beliefs may be impacting the quality of relationships with others in your space. It may help you to see the world through their eyes, to better understand or appreciate how their choices are influenced by attitudes and beliefs different to yours. You never know, you may just uncover a new attitude or belief or adjust one’s already in place that lead to better outcomes for you.
Sometimes are wisest teachers and most insightful lessons come from people that challenge us in some way and are different to us in some way. If we were all the same, if we all thought exactly the same, behaved exactly the same, operated with exactly the same perceptions, attitudes and beliefs wouldn’t life be shallow, empty and lacking in zest?
