Make a Mark by Giving the Benefit of Doubt
Human beings are prone to the habit of giving each other a hard time, particularly when we find out that someone has committed a mistake. We all make mistakes. Personally, I believe that it would be impossible to count all the mistakes that I have ever made in life. They are just too many! What I have come to realize, though, is that I would not be where I am to day had some people not given me the benefit of doubt along the way. What do I mean by this?
Giving the benefit of doubt simply means believing something good of someone rather than something bad when you have the possibility of believing either of the two. I remember many times in my childhood when my parents would give me the benefit of doubt after my sisters or brothers accused me of one thing or another. There were many times when my teachers gave me the benefit of doubt when I came to school with incomplete work or got into skirmishes with other students. These simple acts of belief contributed a lot in enabling me to prove that there was a lot of good in me.
Having that foundation of people believing good things about me has helped me to continually believe the best in others. There are times when I have been cut-off by other drivers on the road and I’ve silently told myself, “He or she must be in a hurry to get to work” or “Maybe they have a sick person at the hospital they are rushing to see”. This kind of thinking keeps me from going negative about the situation or incident.
The truth is that we cannot change other people. Giving the benefit of doubt is therefore our surest way of staying in a positive frame of mind as regards other people’s behaviors or actions. Giving the benefit of doubt communicates to the other person that we may not know what they are going through but we are willing to understand the situation. This keeps us from being stressed by people’s behaviors. Make a mark today by giving the benefit of doubt.
