A trauma expert's insight: understand someone's circumstances and their behavior makes sense. Replace quick judgments with curiosity and empathy. The speaker says this shift makes life feel richer and people seem cooler.
And I'm gonna teach you a phrase I'll never forget in my life 'cause it changed my life 2 years ago. I was working with this expert, one of the world-renowned experts around trauma. And he said, Mike, if you knew the atmospheric conditions— his name is Dr. Don Wood, I'm gonna give him credit— if you knew the atmospheric condition of any human being, everything they did would make sense to you. Imagine if in this room, when you leave this room today, you choose as a Whitmore human being or just as a citizen of this world, Instead of judging in the hallway, I'm going to try to understand what got them to where they are and how they think. Instead of going, how dare they think the way they think? Try to have empathy. It gives you a whole different place to live with. You start to see how cool everybody in this room is if you're willing to actually learn about people. It makes a huge difference.
