Unconditional Positive Regard

When you wake up in the morning, do you ever think… “I really want to make some people mad today! I’m going to piss them off, hurt their feelings, and really make them feel awful.” I doubt it. I honestly doubt I know anyone that wakes up and thinks that. Sure, I’m not going to argue that there are people like that who exist, but in the circle of people that I interact with, I haven’t seen them.

Photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash

So why is it that we all come across situations where we do piss people off? We do hurt people’s feelings, even when it’s not our intention. Often it feels like it’s out of our control.

Well, I would argue that it is out of our control. We can only control our own actions. We do not control how others interpret those actions. When people are interpreting our actions, we want them to assume the best of us, we want them to see that we had good intentions no matter what the outcome may have been. We want them to offer us unconditional positive regard.

So, unconditional positive regard means doing the same for them, assuming they have good intentions no matter what the result. It just takes a moment to separate your reaction, from what actually happened. If its a situation where you need to know the other person’s intention, the best way to find out is to directly ask. But in many situations, just knowing that the offender’s intentions were good, is…