In a recent conversation with a colleague, she told me about a practice she learned that has helped her avoid added personal and interpersonal distress as she moves through her world, and I’d like to share it with you. It falls in the category of come of the solution-focused exercises we’ve explored before, where the emphasis is on looking for what’s going right. In this case, the focus is on giving people the benefit of the doubt in situations that would ordinarily lead to unproductive conflict, distress or discomfort (unproductive in the sense that it doesn’t lead to resolution, deeper understanding and/or intimacy).

For example, the next time a driver cuts you off on the road, if you’re a person who tends to get angry with that kind of experience, notice what happens if you assume that the person is distracted by something weighing on them and that they didn’t cut you off on purpose. Or, if a store clerk is particularly nasty or unhelpful, notice what happens if you assume that the person has had a bad experience with someone else, is unhappy, or is in some other way stressed out and not handling it well.

Fundamental to this exercise is a willingness to suspend disbelief – or to suspend deeply held convictions about people – and play with the assumption that people aren’t doing things to hurt us on purpose. The exercise focuses, instead, on the fact that everyone has challenges and everyone gets caught up in inelegant, nasty, or otherwise-hurtful behavior at times. Think of the last time you did something that upset someone, when you had no intention of creating that particular outcome.

One of the elements of giving people – and yourself – the benefit of the doubt is letting go of judgment. Judgment generally emerges from our preconceptions, from our beliefs about how things are supposed to be. Judgment jumps in we react before we have a chance to consider what might actually be happening. For example, if a person looks at you blankly, depending on the assumptions you carry, you might feel they are ignoring you, insulting you, challenging you, or you could shift into playing with giving them the benefit of the doubt and wonder if they are distracted and probably not noticing you at all. Each interpretation brings a particular response, and this week’s experiment invites you to explore the interpretations that bring responses of greater ease.

What you may notice in this experiment of giving other people a break – of giving them the benefit of the doubt, that they aren’t out there to get you, and to underscore the fact that we’re all in this journey together – is what happens to the quality of your day when you hold this internal perspective. This doesn’t mean you want to allow people to hurt you, or to stand by when bad things are happening. Instead, this particular experiment offers an opportunity to watch the flow of your consciousness and see your automatic responses to interpersonal experiences as they relate to the assumptions you bring to these encounters.