Your judgments distance you from #connection.
I’ve heard several stories this week about people making immediate judgments about somebody new, and later realizing that the person was not at all who they thought; those judgments were all in their own head. This happens because our brains go into overdrive when we meet somebody new, trying to figure out how this person will treat us, and particularly wondering whether we will be safe. We build a whole story of who the other person is based on what we can immediately observe and pattern match to our previous experiences.
The challenge is that the story we create from our previous experiences may have nothing to do with the actual person in front of us. We miss out on opportunities for authentic connection because our brains bias towards safety and distance from people not in our tribe. Sometimes that may be the right thing to do, because there are people that will seek to take advantage of you. But putting up those walls also means missing out on the generative possibilities of interacting with new people.
In other words, #youhaveachoice in any new interaction:
1) You can assume everybody is out to get you; this will keep you safer, but has the cost of preventing new connections and possibilities.
2) You can assume the best of people, trusting that you will be able to handle the inevitable disappointments when a few of them turn out not to be trustworthy. Most people try to live up to other people’s expectations of them; if you assume they’ll be great, they often are.
3) You can reserve judgment. Start with curiosity to learn more about this individual person in front of you, rather than making up a story about them based on their clothes, their skin color, their hairstyle or whatever cues you notice. Treat them as an individual, not a stereotype.
As usual, there’s no right approach here, but recognize the choices in assumptions you make about the people you meet. And if you want different interactions, change your assumptions.