I'M NOT HERE TO HURT YOU

Hi there. I'm going to ask you to do a mental experiment really quick.

Think of the people around you. Your friends. Your family. People you pass by on the street. People at the grocery store.

Now answer this question: do most of these people seem generally kind? Do they seem like they would help you if you were having a heart attack? If you smile at them, do they smile back?

The point of this brief article is to call out a strange mental flaw that has seemed to take over our immediate reactions to others.

Doubt

Doubt is an inkling of an idea that causes an interpretation problem. There is an old quote from a poem by Robert Burns:

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

The same can be said about intentions. There is no more frustrating feeling than having the best intentions in what you do for others and having it fall flat in your face.

Doubt takes what you thought was a clear message and throws it in a kaleidoscope of untruths.

Doubt is everywhere and we aren't good at hiding it. It is clear in the way we respond to a multitude of situations. We believe people generally have bad intentions, so even in positive situations we look for the weakest point. If we believed people generally had good intentions, we could view negative situations with an air of grace, searching for the positive element that we must be missing.

Dirty Thoughts

So why do we hold onto doubt and think most people are out to harm us, even though we know that is not true based on our original mental experiment?

It's part of how we are psychologically wired, As humans, believe it or not, we want to survive. In the early days of humanity we became experts at fight or flight: searching for threats in the environment around us and avoiding them like the plague (sometimes literally the plague).

Now, in the modern era, survival preoccupies far less of our thoughts, time, and energy. The nature of "threats" shifted from life or death to threats to our social status, wealth, and beliefs. If you're wondering why politics and religion aren't good topics to discuss at family gatherings, it's because your basest instinct flashes prehistoric memories of life and death where there should really just be dialogue and learning.

Updating Your Hard Drive

So how do we get out of this survival state where our minds incorrectly search for threats and points of weakness when we should be celebrating our slow but steady progress as humans?

The first step is a regular tap on your own shoulder - to remind yourself of the results of our mental experiment we did at the beginning of this article.

If we believe the majority of people want to do good (which means only a small minority are out to do bad), that should change our frame of thought and response.

Here are some general statements that I bet you would say are true about you:

• You care about others.
• You are trying to do your best.
• You make mistakes and hope people will recognize your mistakes as deviations from who you aspire to be, and not who you are.

If you say that these statements are true about you, wouldn't that be a prime example that they are probably true about other people too? Here's the flip-side of these statements that are generally true about others:

• Other people (generally) care about you.
• Other people (generally) are trying to do their best.
• Other people make mistakes, and hope you will recognize these mistakes as deviations from who they aspire to be, and not who they are.

A small minority of people may have bad intentions. I believe recognizing the good in others helps you recognize when "something doesn't add up" with those with bad intentions. By all means, run from those who don't have your best interest in mind, knowing that the majority of the world around you will be there with open arms.

What a uniquely positive world we could have if we erred on the side of trust and not on the side of harm avoidance. I am not out to hurt you.