In this short, the speaker offers a practical mindset shift for handling interpersonal conflict. He advises listeners to pause judgment and replace it with curiosity by asking, “Why would a reasonable and sane person act this way?” Using the example of a coworker cutting you off, he shows how this reframing can create space for intentional response rather than reactive anger. He also cautions against casually labeling others with psychiatric terms like “narcissist” or “bipolar” without professional training, noting that such labels are overused and unfair. The overall message is to foster peace by questioning assumptions, staying curious, and avoiding harmful judgments.
Chapters
Ask yourself what in this could be true. If it's something that's being said about you, you want to— it's, it's, you want to ask, is that actually true? It's stepping out of what your first interpretation is. When you begin to reframe it, take the opportunity to move from judgment to curiosity. One of the things that in a workshop I used to teach a long time ago was Ask yourself, why would a reasonable and sane person do X? Okay, if it's they, you know, if they say something right, why would a reasonable and sane person say something or act a certain way? In that situation where the coworker cuts you off, you could start out thinking, hey, they probably didn't mean to cut me off, but maybe they're just under pressure as well. Maybe they have to hurry up and get it out. Now, reframing it doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does give you space to go back in that situation and go back in with intention and not just reaction. Now, by the way, if it doesn't work, it is toxic. I think too often there's, there's, there's a label that gets thrown out way too often now. And it's called narcissism. People will take anything that someone does wrong against them and they diagnose that person as being narcissistic. Now, unless you've got a degree in psychology, you don't really need to throw that term out there. Men get called narcissistic because of something they said or that they did, and that may or may not be true. But if you're not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, don't Don't throw that label on someone. The same thing used to happen to women for about the past 15 years. And they say, oh, that person's bipolar. Neither one's fair. So, so let's avoid the labels and, and the judgments there.
