A thought by Mike Bechtle from his book, People Can't Drive You Crazy If You Don't Give Them the Keys (p. 26). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
And that may be true of you and me.
Mike says, “Their lives and emotions seem to be at the mercy of everything that happens around them. Without realizing it, they have become victims of the weaknesses of others and their lives are controlled by those people.
Mike tells of a situation where his wrong perception brought about great drama.
He says, “Where did my emotions come from in that process? Since I didn’t have all the facts, did the real drama come from the situation or from my interpretation of the situation? Could I have handled it differently? What about the next time something like that happens? Is there a way to respond differently?
“I realized that my problem was threefold: I didn’t have all the facts, so I made assumptions. I decided those assumptions were accurate. My emotions were based on assumptions that were untrue (but I didn’t know they were untrue).
“Notice that the whole process took place inside my head. In this case, I was upset that another person was messing up my life. But if I had known the truth, I could have made better assumptions and experienced different emotions. In fact, that’s exactly what happened when I finally discovered the truth.
Mike goes on, “That’s the problem with our perspective; we always assume we’re right based on the information we have. In most of this book, we’ll be talking about how to respond when people make crazy choices that mess up our lives. But the place to begin is with our perspective. No matter what the other person does, it’s our perspective that determines how we feel and respond.
“Our perspective is the lens through which we interpret everything we see in the world around us. It’s like wearing glasses. Unless they’re really dirty, we don’t notice the lenses; we see through those lenses. If the lenses have the wrong prescription, things look distorted. When that happens, we don’t question the lens; we just assume that the object we’re seeing is really distorted.
Later Mike says, “The Bible says that any argument makes sense until we hear the other side (Prov. 18:17). That doesn’t mean we’re wrong and the other person is right. But it means that our perspective may be incomplete. The only hope we have for dealing with crazy people is to base our assumptions, actions, and responses on truth.
“It takes humility to question our perspectives. Until we look through the other person’s eyes, we don’t have the complete picture.”
Our life would be so much more peaceful if we could strive to do that, wouldn’t it?
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