How to Treat Others as we Should

Life, or our reality of life, is all about story telling.  We make up stories in our mind to explain things.  Some stories we may tell ourselves might be something like these; “my mom is always nagging me to clean my room, she always wants to be in control of my life,” or “this person intentionally cut me off on the road, they must be a self-absorbed jerk”, or “my boss was just very short with me, he doesn’t appreciate any of my hardwork” or “my spouse just got upset with me, she’s cold hearted and doesn’t care at all about our marriage.”

Unfortunately, these stories we tell ourselves all day long distort reality.  Using some of the examples above, how might we react if the person who cut us off just found out his child was rushed to the hospital?  Or what if our boss is struggling because his wife has cancer?  Or what if our spouse had an argument earlier in the day with her mother?  How would our responses and feelings change if these were all true? 

And what if they weren’t true, would it still justify and prove our original story telling to ourselves?  It is impossible for us to know exactly what is causing certain behavior in others, maybe the person who cut us off really is a self-absorbed jerk, but how would our reality or our life change if we instead told ourselves “gosh something really bad must be going on for that person, I hope they make it to their destination safely.”  Telling positive stories will allow us to see people as people and will give us the opportunity to find out what is truly going on before we react.   

Our brains are wired to fill in the gaps however for some reason, most of us fill in those gaps with negativity.  Learning to control our stories and considering positive ones will improve our attitude, behavior, emotions, and experience in life.  Rather than jump to negative conclusions, let’s find a positive one. 

When we can tell ourselves positive stories it opens the door for positive, rewarding relationships.  Viewing people as people, with worries, fears, struggles, much like our own will help us treat them as such and avoid all the negativity we often overwhelm ourselves with.  If you find yourself filling in the gaps with negative stories, stop and change the story.  Doing so will lead to a happier and more satisfying and successful life.