How To Find The Best In People

For many of us, the pandemic came with additional interpersonal struggles.

You probably weren’t used to spending all your days with your partner or family, or you are stuck alone and miss human interaction altogether.

Social connections play a massive role in our lives. Because of this, our relationships are our greatest assets. How we communicate with people has an outsized impact on our mood and how we make others feel plays a huge role in the quality of our social bonds.

We all know how easy it is to criticize others and unfortunately, most of us do it regularly.

Specifically, people who are close to us often have to listen to our accusations and complaints without any valid reason.

Criticizing people is easy.

Even though I’m into personal development and human psychology for a few years now, I still find myself accusing my fellows without any valid reason from time to time.

It’s so much easier to find mistakes in others than admitting our own flaws.

I find myself criticizing my boyfriend all the time even though I am convinced of his good nature. 

Most of the time, our criticizing isn’t necessarily a reaction to someone’s mistakes but only a reflection of our own emotions.

Too often I find myself criticizing people for all the things that I actually do wrong in the first place.

But it’s much easier to accuse others than ourselves, that’s why we do it so often.

We’re all imperfect and all of us make mistakes. But life is not about being flawless anyway.

It’s more about understanding each other and highlighting our positive qualities instead of pinpointing at our faults.

We fall deeply in love, and after some time, we find ourselves complaining about all the bad sides of our partner. We’ve all been there, right?

Six weeks into knowing a person, we feel like she’s the most magnificent person on earth, six months into a relationship, and we spend more time talking about her faults than her strengths. 

However, we often miss out on a critical point:

We choose the people around us.

I know this doesn’t apply outright to our families, but if things get really tough, we can choose to continue our lives without them, right? It’s not an easy choice, but it’s an option we have.

With every relationship, there is some reason why we let them into our lives and decided to spend our time with them.

In fact, there must be positive attributes in anyone who we know intimately. Otherwise, we wouldn’t tolerate them.

Yet, unfortunately, finding negative aspects of someone’s personality is far easier than highlighting their strengths.

As humans, we tend towards the negative.

We all gossip. It’s simple and universal. But we hardly compliment others for their success.

But why does that matter?

Because we become more proficient in finding positive aspects in ourselves if we see positivity in others.

According to scientists, communicators are often taken on the qualities they describe in others.

Meaning if you gossip about someone, sharing how lazy and careless she is, these characteristics will be associated with you.

This phenomenon is described as spontaneous trait transference and is particularly dangerous if we gossip with people whom we don’t know well yet as the chances of being associated with the negative aspects are even higher.

Bottom Line: Life is not only more fun and beautiful but also more comfortable when we appreciating the qualities of the people around us instead of highlighting their flaws.

Take Responsibility

Whenever you get annoyed by someone’s reaction or behavior, be aware that you chose to be around them.

At any given moment, you can decide to walk away, to ask them to stop an annoying act or to start a serious conversation about whatever disturbs you.

If your boss, partner, or friends suck, it’s your responsibility to take action.

I know that it’s not easy, but walking away is always an option we have.

If you, however, don’t want to run away from your problems, you still need to take responsibility and act in order to change the situation.

Talk to people. Tell them what annoys you and what you need.

In most cases, deep conversations will lead to more clarity, and you will find out that the other person didn’t want to harm or hurt you in any way.

Take responsibility and communicate openly. Because in most cases, open and honest communication will help to avoid significant conflicts before they even arise.

Remind Yourself of the Positive Aspects

In most cases, we are not annoyed by a person but only by a specific aspect of that person. And, often, only for a few moments.

We all have flaws and make mistakes. Nobody is perfect, and in fact, that’s not even what we should strive for.

Life is exciting with all the ups and downs we face, and making mistakes is just a part of being human.

And while accepting our own mistakes is not easy, it’s even more important to forgive others quickly and to remind ourselves of all their positive characteristics instead of focusing on a single fault.

Being aware of the strengths and positive aspects of your fellows is a critical part of appreciating them.

For example, you could take some time and do a little reflection on which characteristics you most admire in your fellows, no matter if it’s your partner, your mum, or your boss. They all have strengths and beautiful aspects, and once we are aware of these, accepting their faults becomes easier.

Judge Less

Too often, we judge people without trying to understand their behavior.

Why?

Probably because it’s easier.

Open communication is not simple, but it’s the most powerful and needed tool to establish strong, lasting relationships.

Only if we stop judging and try to understand our fellows can we grasp their true motivations and find ways to get along well.

In most cases, our partner, boss, our family doesn’t mean to disappoint or fret us. Yet, it’s your job to communicate openly and ask them what their intention was instead of judging or even beating back.

Too often, we are so used to the negative that we automatically judge any behavior of our fellows. Yet, once we have a closer look, we realize that they actually don’t want us any bad anyway.

Try to step back.

Don’t judge.

If you don’t understand a specific statement or behavior, just ask and start an honest, open conversation.

Bottom Line

Finding the best in people is not always easy. We’re all busy, and we want our relationships to work smoothly instead of investing too much time and energy into understanding each other.

But that’s not how it works.

Relationships are fragile and require lots of effort and, most importantly: They are humane.

They include mistakes, flaws, and setbacks, just as we do.

We all have weaknesses.

And we’re all work in progress, but that’s fine as long as we accept our own and others’ faults and deal with them cautiously.

If we’d put more effort into understanding our fellows and strengthening our relationships by highlighting the best in each other instead of our mistakes, I’m sure the world would be a better, more peaceful place.

You might not be able to change the world. But next time you are mad at somebody, you can change your and their world by being more compassionate, taking responsibility, stoping the judgment, and reminding yourself of their positive characteristics.