¶ Contemplating the Cold Plunge Experience
Cold plunge thoughts.
¶ The Challenge of Misjudgment
No matter how good our intentions are, people are going to misjudge what we're doing. People are going to see some ulterior motive. People are going to judge us fairly or unfairly. And it's easy for us to do the same to other people. I found two strategies that have helped me deal with this. I've found two strategies that have helped me not judge people harshly.
¶ Two Strategies: Positive Intent and Blameless Discernment
Number one, assume positive intent. Assume that people are doing the best they can with what they got, no matter what's going on. And number two, use blameless discernment instead of judgment. Blameless discernment is identifying what happened, keeping the emotions out of it, and just looking at the facts. If somebody cheated me out of something, then I can blamelessly discern that they cheated and it wasn't cool, and I can keep them at arm's length in the future.
¶ Avoiding Judgment and Understanding Intentions
And I don't even have to judge them. I can just say, this was a bad situation. I should steer clear of that. The real issue with judging isn't that, though. The real issue with judging is when we assume we understand what their intentions were or why they were doing something that they did. So blamelessly discerning just identifies their actions without us taking into account why or how they did it, because we can't know that.
Unless they explicitly tell us and we believe that they're being honest, we can't know. So, assume positive intent and blamelessly discern rather than judge others. It helps a lot. This is how I deal with people who wrong me.