Assume The Best

There is a lot eBay we can learn from eBay about social dynamics:

“When perfect strangers, who are thousands of miles apart, trust each other to conduct transactions, it’s a compelling testimonial to the power of everyone in the eBay Community. At the core of this power is the strength of eBay’s Community Values, which are built on the bedrock that ‘People are basically good.”

Source: http://pages.ebay.com/community/chatter/2004december/poaou.html

Sure, there are scumbags out there, but generally when I am meeting new people, it’s extremely rare that I ever meet someone who will tell me to “fuck off” or disrespect me for no reason whatsoever. Yet I hear guys say things like, “I barely said anything, and she threw her drink in my face!”

Those things almost always happen for a reason. There are rare exceptions when someone is truly in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone else with a bad attitude decides to take out their aggression on the next person they see. Yes, that happens sometimes, but those experiences don’t have to clutter our judgement and install negative assumptions in our minds.

Many guys who are out learning to socialize and develop confidence are carrying around the baggage from those past experiences and projecting those negative beliefs onto the people they meet, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy everything they assume becomes true because they are scared and bitter.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• When another man approaches the group of girls you’re talking to, do you immediately assume he’s there to steal your women, OR do you assume he is out to have a good time and socialize?
• When the waitress brings you your bill and you see a $100 charge for something you didn’t order, do you assume she’s trying to rip you off, OR do you assume she just made an honest mistake that she will gladly fix?
• When your friends don’t return your phone call, do you assume they don’t respect you, OR do you respect that they would love to hang out with you but they’ve been busier than usual and haven’t been able to return calls.
• When you make plans to go out on a Friday night, do you assume it’ll be another night of getting shot down and rejected by nasty, mean people, OR do you assume everyone will be friendly and easy to talk to, love your personality, and women will approach YOU wanting to get to know you?

When I noticed a pattern in my life of habitually being wrong about my negative assumptions, I began to replace them with positive assumptions, and sure enough my assumptions are almost always right. After all this, I’ve truly come to believe that people are generally good.

I propose that rather than assuming the worst of people, justifying rejection and safely sitting at home avoiding people for fear of that one bad experience that left a bitter taste, try taking the risk of assuming the best. Even if your new positive assumptions are wrong once in a while, when you begin living a life without fear and allow yourself to enjoy people and making new friends, the payoff you’ll gain is much more valuable.