Have you ever noticed how somebody else's negative behavior can get you riled up, indignant, and even angry, even if it's not directed specifically at you?
On the way back from camping this weekend, the proverbial jerk on the highway zoomed past us at mach speed, weaving in and out through traffic. My knee-jerk response was, "What an asshole!" But then I thought of something I read in the soon-to-be-published Be the Hero, a parable-style book about the degree to which the stories we tell (about others, our situation, and ourselves) shape the world we experience.
In it, the two main characters are having a a conversation about what boils down to giving people the benefit of the doubt and creating a positive story for them. They were exploring a scenario in which someone they didn't know was behaving like a jerk, and looking at two different possible stories for the reason for the behavior.
In one alternative, the person was just a jerk. In the other, they created a story that put him in a more positive light, coming up with potential good reasons why he was behaving that way.
The point was that telling ourselves that negative story about someone else both disempowers and drains us. Since we don't actually know what is really going on in these situations, why not create a story that lets us feel good (or at least not bad) about them?
With that in mind, I decided to play a game with the highway jerks, coming up with positive stories for why they were behaving that way. De-jerkifying them in my mind, if you will. It started with reasonable explanations but quickly devolved into coming up with silly, funny, occasionally ludicrous explanations. Suddenly the jerks were becoming a source of laughter for us.
Ultimately, neither believability nor likelihood were requirements for the stories we made up. It became less about "finding excuses for them" and more about a fun way to shift our own focus and reactions.
That got me thinking - what if we all made a habit out of de-jerkifying people with our stories? What if every time we're faced with telling a story that we don't really know the details to, we default to searching for a positive spin?
At the very least it could remove an irritant from your life. At most, it could change how you see the world.
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