Today I was driving home and within a five or ten second time span a concept sort of popped in my brain. With those kinds of things it’s always hard to explain them part by part in words because when they hit you like that you just understand it and don’t have to explain it to yourself necessarily, but let’s just take a try and see how that works out.
Basically I was thinking about people’s behaviors in terms of jumping to conclusions, assuming the worst, taking things personally, and just generally overreacting to things (that are often times misunderstandings). Have you ever noticed that it’s so much easier to be so honest and straightforward with those people who don’t have those behaviors? (The people who believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, who don’t take things personally, who can stay rational and calm rather than overreact, and who more naturally are willing to step into other people’s shoes and understand where they’re coming from.) This is as opposed to people who display the opposite behaviors, who are often times difficult to be completely honest and straightforward with because under situations of confrontation things just become so much more complicated and misunderstood with them.
So many times people have these major trust issues and will assume the worst in people because of it rather than give them the benefit of the doubt, when often I think that it’s those kinds of attitudes that cause people to do things that could be considered untrustworthy, like not being completely honest or withholding something to avoid confrontation. So if people continue to act in this way they could just be making it more difficult for people to want to or be able to be honest and straightforward with them, making the trust issues worse, in turn.
So I guess it comes down to your own temperament. If you don’t want to have to worry about not being able to trust people to be honest with you, maybe do what you can on your part. Although there are always going to be the people who are just dishonest regardless of who they are dealing with, those behaviors of jumping to negative conclusions and overreacting can’t help. Maybe if more people made a point of being more understanding, calm, rational, and of giving people the benefit of the doubt they would make it easier for people to be honest to them, and hopefully make it easier for themselves to trust people to do so with them in calmer forms of confrontation.
I figured that would sound very jumbled, repetitive, and confusing. It probably does. But, I’m tired and have to get up early for work tomorrow so it’s the best I can do to try to explain what was up with my brain in that moment and a thought I’ve been working on since then. I’ll always try to remind myself to be someone people can feel more comfortable coming to and honestly confronting. Besides, in the long run it’s better to calmly deal with things and have them be out there than to avoid it because of an impending, intense explosion of a confrontation.
Yeah, I need some sleep. Goodnight, all.
JD
