Sometimes other people's actions feel like they have a really big impact on us, and, if we perceive that impact as negative, we can spend a lot of energy asking ourselves things like:
Why did they do this to me?
Why don't they care?
Why are they so selfish?
Don't they know how much time this is going to take me / money this will cost me / other impact on me?
The reality, however, is that often people do things for themselves, without any thought about the impact it might have on others - certainly not with the intention of hurting others.
So how about saving yourself the energy and deciding to change your perspective:
Assume good intentions
From this perspective you can make much more proactive choices of what to do. Knowing they did not intend to create a negative impact for you or hurt you, you can:
- Decide to carry on, the impact isn't that bad anyway
- Decide to reframe your reaction to "they were doing this to help themselves, how could I help them differently without the negative impact on me"
- Decide to talk to them and explain the impact (they never even thought of) and work out a way forward that suits you both
There are plenty of other decisions you could make, just from taking a different perspective. What could yours be?
And knowing this, can you change the way you do things, to always deliberately have "good intentions" and think about the impact on others?
And be kind - to yourself and to others – always.