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Writer's pictureDiana Noble

Re-framing Bad Outcomes to Good Intentions

​Most people aren't walking around deliberately being assholes. ​99% of the time, people have really good intentions but somewhere in the middle between thinking and acting, ​some miscommunication happens (either​ inside you or outside with someone else​) and then it all goes downhill from there.

For example, the other day my precious 3 year old son​ decides to pour the rest of his milk into the tree in our living room because he thought the tree was thirsty. Cute right? The intention was good - the outcome was bad, because obviously trees don't drink milk. In his mind, he was coming from a place of trying to help, but the outcome... well, there's now sour milk in my tree. As an observer or someone who was adversely affected, I could either get mad because ​I'm focusing solely on the result, or I could re-frame the bad outcome​ and recognize the good intention ​behind it. See where I'm going with this?

There's this​ principle that states people are always doing the best they can in any particular situation. Sometimes, our "best" is like 1% ​and other times it's 150%. The intentions are almost always good, but that doesn't always translate into what the outcomes look like on the surface.


Watch this episode of Friday at Five where I talk about how to re-frame bad outcomes to the good intentions behind them.




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