Have you ever thought about what the other person is thinking?  Even if they are being hateful what might be going on in their lives?

When someone cuts me off in traffic my first reaction is to get agitated.  Then I calm down and often the way I do this is to think to myself that I don’t know what is going on with that person and maybe it was an honest mistake.  When we have knee jerk reactions we tend to do or say things that we don’t mean or, at least, don’t mean them to be as hateful as we said them.

When someone pisses you off do you stop to think about what they are going through?  Do you try and look at it from their perspective?

Each of us are individuals with our own thoughts and minds and three of us looking at a picture might perceive three different things.  If you look at the picture to the left you might see something totally different than me.  Let’s say three people are looking at it and these are their perspectives:

1. A quiet street.
2. A nice shot of San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.
3. A picture of a building.

All three people have legitimate perspectives.  It does look like a quite street (maybe it is early morning and the sun just rose.  You can see a bridge in the background which may very well be the Golden Gate leading you to believe this is in San Francisco.  And the brown building on the right tends to stand out a little so maybe that really is what this picture is of.

However, all three would be wrong.

This is a picture I took at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World.  This was a backlot like they shoot movies on.  Those buildings are fake and the sky and buildings in the background are plastered on a wall.

This is simply a rather long explanation to say when someone does something you don’t like, don’t agree with, or what have you take a moment and try and see their perspective on the matter.  You still do not have to agree but looking at it from both sides can help you understand where the person is coming from and in matters where a decision has to be made can help to make one that satisfies all parties involved.