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We often create instant stories about people based on limited information, and those stories are usually wrong. A personal experience of accidentally cutting in line became a lesson in assuming positive intent. Pause, reframe, and choose empathy over judgment. The stories we tell ourselves shape our mindset, relationships, and daily happiness.
I cut in line at the grocery store once. Didn't even realize I did it. And somewhere behind me, someone had already decided exactly what kind of person I was.
Someone cuts in front of you at the grocery store.
Before you consciously decide anything, your brain has already written a story. That person is selfish. They saw you standing there. They chose to disrespect you.
The story fires instantly. And it makes you the target every time.
And the story is usually wrong.
I know this because I was once the person who cut the line.
My wife Tina was preparing for the birth of our first daughter. She asked me to run out and get something she needed. I burst into the store, grabbed it, and jumped into line without being aware of anything or anyone around me.
Somebody in that store wrote a story about me that day. Rude. Inconsiderate. Thinking only of himself.
I was a husband trying to get back to his wife before things got harder without him.
The difference between their anger and their empathy was just information they didn't have.
That sentence changed how I move through the world. Every time I feel the flash of frustration at a stranger, I remember standing in that line, completely unaware, doing something that mattered deeply to my family.
When someone cuts in front of me now, I run a different script.
"Oh, that's interesting. I wonder what's going on in their lives."
This does more than neutralize the frustration. It keeps you from going to a dark place. Once you assume positive intent for the people around you, your mindset stays positive, because the world stops feeling like it's aimed at you.
I push back a little on how a lot of coaches talk about mindset. They treat it like a personality trait, something you either have or you don't. In my experience, it's a practice. A system you build one small behavior at a time.
And like any system, it needs practical steps. If I can't give you something to do today, I haven't actually helped you.
Here is the system I use, and the one I teach.
Take the pause. Create space between the trigger and your reaction.
Assume positive intent. Write a generous story instead of a defensive one.
Go on with your day and enjoy it. Put the moment down. It was small.
The pause is the hard part, because the brain's story fires faster than your good intentions. So I anchor it physically.
💡 Squeeze your hand together, really hard. That's what I do. The squeeze gives you just enough space to catch yourself before the story takes you somewhere you don't want to go.
People skip this because it sounds too simple. But the simple tools are the ones that actually get used. A hand squeeze in a grocery line is something. That's the whole point.
I've spent 30 years building teams, and the ones that worked well shared this. People who gave each other the benefit of the doubt solved problems together. The ones who wrote villain stories about each other stopped talking.
It starts with individuals, in small moments, like a grocery line.
The thing I want people to actually hold onto: we control our response. Every situation. We just forget that when the story fires fast.
And underneath all of it, nobody's trying to do anything to me. I just need to enjoy the day.
Somebody will cut in front of you this week. The story will fire before you can do anything about it.
Squeeze your hand. Take a breath. Give that person a story you can live with, because it's probably closer to true anyway.
I was that guy once. I was a husband who didn't even notice anyone around him. And I was doing the most important thing in my world at that moment.
Have you ever been the villain in someone else's story, and only found out later? What did that change for you?
#TheLessonsWeAlmostMiss #Mindset #PersonalDevelopment
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