Quote Originally Posted by Melalvai View Post
My career coach / mentor keeps telling me to cultivate a spirit of curiosity, when I'm annoyed or troubled or angry or upset about someone's behavior. She says that the person's behavior, to them, is perfectly reasonable, rational, and right, that people (except in rare circumstances) do not intentionally do things that they believe are evil.

It is usually possible to avoid or diffuse a situation without ever understanding why the person acts that way, and probably easier (in the short term). But it is more rewarding (she claims) to learn about the person's motivations. Among other things, we come to understand that it was never about us, it was always about them. It wasn't personal.

To get to that information you have to put aside any judgments, preconceptions, and stories you have created about the person and his actions. For example the notion that gossip is bad and harmful. (Maybe it is but put that aside.) Or that he has malicious intentions.

I'm definitely not perfect at this but I'm really coming around to her way of looking at things.
That's interesting. It would take a lot of work for me to come around to that way of thinking. IMO, along the spectrum between purely innocent behavior and evil behavior, I think there's a lot in the middle that falls under the label of "dysfunctional." I don't know that that type of behavior can be met--at least in a lot of instances--merely with open-minded non-judgmental curiosity, in part because a lot of people who engage in dysfunctional behavior (like malicious gossiping) don't even understand why they do it, appreciate the impact it has on other people or have either the ability or desire to change. In my own dealings with such behaviors, I'm often more inclined to draw whatever boundaries I need to draw to protect myself than to try to learn and understand the other person's motivations.