Today I heard a story about a woman who went through an experience that taught her a great life lesson about perspective.\u00a0 I will try and relay the story the best I can remember it (since I wasn\u2019t taking notes when I heard it).<\/p>\n
This woman was driving to the grocery store in her car which didn\u2019t have air conditioning and she had her child with her in the car seat. It was hot and the baby was extremely fussy and the woman just wanted to park and get into the store.\u00a0 When she drove through the parking lot the only spot open to park was barely a spot someone could fit into because the person parked next to the spot had parked so poorly.\u00a0 The woman was frustrated and angry at this person who parked so horribly.\u00a0 She vented to herself about how ridiculous this other person was and how much she disliked them for parking so poorly and being so clearly rude and inconsiderate of everyone else needing to park.\u00a0 In fact she was so upset with whoever parked that car that she even considered leaving a nasty note for them on their window telling them exactly what she thought of their parking job, but she decided against it.\u00a0 She did her best to squeeze her car into the open space and she hurried into the store with her child.\u00a0 Even as she shopped she carried the feelings of anger and frustration toward this horrible parker with her. \u00a0Finally after completing her shopping she exited the store and began walking toward her car she saw that the parked car that had caused her so much angst was no longer there and an open space stood in its stead.\u00a0 As she looked toward her car, now parked alone, she realized that her own car appeared to have been parked by someone who was totally inconsiderate and a terrible parker\u2026then as she got closer she saw that a note sat on her windshield left by another driver letting her know just how angry they were with her for her having parked so horribly (in much less kind words than that).<\/p>\n
What a great lesson this woman learned.\u00a0 Anyone who came in that parking lot after she had parked would have thought she was the person that was rude and didn\u2019t care about others, because that was the appearance of things had someone not known the entire story.\u00a0 But at the same time, when this woman herself entered the parking lot she thought that very same thing about the car she saw parked all crazy and she immediately judged the person driving that car as harshly as someone was now judging her.\u00a0 When in reality that car that blocked her may have been facing the very same struggle she was to get parked.<\/p>\n
I love that story because that happens more times every day then any of us care to admit. We all do it.\u00a0 We see a situation and immediately rush to judgment or make assumptions.\u00a0 We place blame or get angry or upset before we ever have the entire story or all of the facts.\u00a0 And then we often express our feelings of anger toward another person without even considering that they might have another side to the story that we just didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 But the reality is that many times we don\u2019t have the luxury of time to gather every fact necessary in a situation \u2013 or in the example from above the woman pulling into the parking lot may not have been able to track down who the other car belonged to in order to ask them \u2013 and I would say that 9 times out of 10 that is the reality of many situations \u2013 you may never be able to get all the facts or talk to everyone involved \u2013 so then what?!?\u00a0 How do you judge fairly?\u00a0 I love what the woman in the example went on to share \u2013 she said that the real lesson she learned that day was to give everyone the benefit of the doubt from the get go \u2013 don\u2019t assume the worst about people \u2013 assume the best first.<\/p>\n
My son and I talked about it this afternoon and he said that he plays a fun game with it to help him give strangers the benefit of the doubt \u2013 he said that he tries to make up the most extreme positive about the stranger help himself keep good thoughts about them \u2013 for example, if a stranger cuts him off in traffic he might assume they are on their way to propose to the love of their life and were just too excited to notice him, or if money went missing from his wallet he might assume it fell out of his wallet just in time for the stranger who was penniless to see it on the ground and who then could buy food that night for his little kids.\u00a0 He said making up a positive story about what might have caused a stranger to do a negative thing can help keep your perspective towards others positive.\u00a0\u00a0 I think that is a great game to play and I am going to try and do that myself from now on.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that all of us can benefit from giving each other the benefit of the doubt, assuming the best rather than the worst, and not just toward strangers, but most of all toward the people closest to us.<\/p>\n
Have an amazing start to your week!<\/p>\n
~Amy<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I heard a story about a woman who went through an experience that taught her a great life lesson about perspective.\u00a0 I will try and relay the story the best I can remember it (since I wasn\u2019t taking notes when I heard it). This woman was driving to the grocery store in her car […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697,4828,2043,4523,3752,3759,4833,3432,1203,4837,4836,151,1514,1054,51,641,189,1679,4539,2499,4835,1053,216,4829,865,35,529,289,4834,4830,4831,134,153,4832,272,2896,140,1525],"class_list":["post-4907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anger","tag-angle","tag-appearance","tag-assume","tag-assume-the-best","tag-benefit-of-the-doubt","tag-bitter","tag-blame","tag-care","tag-consideration","tag-deceiving","tag-example","tag-facts","tag-fair","tag-family","tag-feelings","tag-friends","tag-frustration","tag-hurt-feelings","tag-hurtful","tag-inconsiderate","tag-judge","tag-kind","tag-life-lessn","tag-life-lesson","tag-love","tag-loving","tag-mean","tag-nasty","tag-parable","tag-parking-lot","tag-perspective","tag-positive","tag-road-rage","tag-story","tag-stranger","tag-strangers","tag-unkind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4908,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4907\/revisions\/4908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}