One way to reduce your stress, reduce the stress you inflict on the people around you, and generally make life a lot smoother: try really hard to assume – unless you have firm evidence to the contrary – that most people are just doing the best they can. The person who messed up your iced tea order, the cranky person behind the counter, the person who mixed up items on the shelves at the grocery – just assume that, for reasons we cannot know, they were doing the best they could.

This means that: you can let go of being angry. Maybe they messed up, and maybe it’s inconvenient, but it wasn’t deliberate and it wasn’t intended to be hurtful. You can try to make it right without being mean. You can let go of being judgmental and then feeling guilty about being judgmental. You can go from leaving the store with steam coming out of your ears thinking, “What is WRONG with them?” and instead wonder with compassion, “Wow, I wonder what’s going wrong for them.”

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.