Don't re-write history in a single moment

There is another skill we need to develop in order to avoid unfairly assassinating someone’s character: giving people credit for who they’ve proven to be over time.

Why are we so tempted to re-evaluate everything we think we know about a person in the moments when they hurt us?

People are going to hurt us, and that doesn’t mean that they are actually NOT kind, that they do NOT care, or that we’ve misunderstood them. (Understand, I’m not talking about abusive relationships here). It just means that relationships are difficult.

Here’s what we need to learn: don’t give negative experiences with a person more weight than positive ones. At least, don’t let one negative experience wipe out ten positive ones. Give people credit for their history.

How do we do this?

Talk. Have a conversation. When someone has a history of treating you well followed by a really bad experience, talk to them. Wait until you’ve processed it with some trusted people, wait until you’ve calmed down a bit, and then approach the conversation with a sense of humility. “Hey, ___ happened, and I’m hurt. Would you mind sharing your perspective with me on this?”

Having a conversation can go a long ways towards overcoming relational problems. It provides clarity on the events, which may resolve the conflict in an of itself, and it grounds us. It prevents us from too hasty in our judgments of others. That’s really our main goal: learning not to be too hasty in judging others.

One Action Cannot Destroy a Reputation

If one action cannot destroy a person’s reputation, as we suggested yesterday, then we must learn a few skills. One, as we said before, we must learn our own triggers. Two, we must become disciplined at evaluating who people prove themselves to be over time.

As for number one- we will not be able to avoid being triggered. We will always have triggers in life, and they may change over time, but there is no way to completely avoid them. What we can do, is learn how to pay attention to them and, when we learn what to pay attention to, we can, over time, learn different kinds of responses to them.

The way to know when you’re triggered is to use the gift of hindsight to evaluate when your emotional response to a situation was entirely too strong. This is going to require some serious honesty, self-reflection, and non-defensiveness. Once you’ve learned that you were triggered, you need to then spend time figuring out what exactly caused the overly-heightened emotional reaction.

In the example of Tim and James from a few days back, the trigger was actually a broken promise, not a “lie.” The broken promise led to the accusation “liar” because of Tim’s sensitivity to broken promises. It would then be his work to figure out why he’s sensitive to broken promises and, more importantly, to make a mental note of the fact that he’s sensitive to that. It would also be important, going forward, for Tim to make mental notes about the times in which people promise him things and to practice thinking through what might happen if they break that promise. This way he can be prepared for his trigger which may help him respond differently.

Using History to "Judge" Someone's Character

For the past few days, we’ve been exploring a case-study about character assassinating, get caught up before reading today’s post.

Too often we will character assassinate a person because we’re feeling hurt as a result of our pasts, and not a result of our past history with that specific person.

Our goal, our ideal, is to treat a person in accordance with who they have proven to be over the course of time. One moment, one action, does not make a person. It does not define their character and it does not describe the totality of who they are.

And yet, how often will one action, one moment, one situation, cause us to doubt everything? He (or she, or whatever) isn’t who I thought he was, we might say.

So let’s just start here, because this may just be a new idea. One action alone cannot erase a person’s entire history. If a person has proven to be reliable, trustworthy, dependable, honest, upstanding, generous, and kind, and they have one bad moment where they act mean and nasty, this doesn’t mean they were secretly mean and nasty that whole time. It means they had a bad moment.

Everyone has bad moments. We all lose our heads from time to time. The fact that someone’s head flies off does not mean that their character is substantially different from what you thought. It’s much more likely to mean they’re tired, stressed, or distracted. Perhaps they are grieving silently.

Who knows? That’s the point. Who knows?

A Triggered Reaction

Yesterday we started a character assassination “case study.” In the example, a made up person named Tim called another made up person named James a liar because he did not follow through on a promise.

Now, if Tim has a history of being on the wrong end of broken promises, we can understand why he might accuse James of being a liar. This has been a pattern elsewhere in his life that has caused great pain, and this similarity has led to a heightened emotional state that does not match what this particular situation demands.

That is what we call a “trigger.” (We talk about triggers too much these days, and we are calling too many things “triggers” that are actually just “bummers,” but stick with me nonetheless). When something happens to us that reminds us of something negative from our pasts that causes us to have a reaction that is too strong given the details of the specific situation we are in, we are “triggered.”

It is important to be aware of these. Why? Because when we are not aware of them, we run the risk of acting out of our heightened emotional state that does not match the situation we are in. We run the risk of causing unnecessary harm.

The first step in unnecessarily assassinating someone’s character is being triggered without awareness of our triggers.

An example of a character assassination

For the next few days, we’re talking about unfair character assassination. Yes, I know, there are times when people do not have great character. We’re not going to talk about that over the next few days. We may spend some time at the end, depending on how things go, but that is not our focus.

We’re going to start with an example. Let’s say someone is caught in a lie (we’ll call this person James) in an “in community” type of relationship, and the person who caught them calls them a liaras a result (we’ll call this person Tim).

Now, we have to start by asking the question, what is a lie? The word “lie” can mean or imply many different things depending on the context in which it is used.

Let’s say James said he was going to do something and then legitimately forgot to do it. Let’s say James has no real pattern of this behavior. Maybe he’s done it a few times over the course of a few years. It’s happened before, but it’s happened at the same rate that it might happen to anyone. It is hardly a defining attribute.

Let’s also say, since I’m making up this example, Tim is particularly sensitive to broken promises because of his own history. He’s more likely to assume ill-intent than most as a result.

Would you consider what James did a lie? Why or why not? How would you approach a conversation with him?

Is it fair for Tim to call James a liar? Why or why not? How would you approach a conversation with him?