Maybe wear the damn rose-coloured glasses | 2.5 min read

The story

Here's something nobody tells you: You're built to be a little miserable.

Humans evolved to scan for threats. The sabertooth, the betrayal, the thing that goes wrong, always.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister put it bluntly — "Bad is stronger than good." Bad news sticks. Good news slides right off.

And if you've got ADD, you're running that same negativity bias on a brain already short on the feel-good chemistry.

So maybe, maybe we give people the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe we should wear the rose-coloured glasses.

Those frames and lenses you throow own so when you look at a person, an idea, a situation, and you assume the best instead of bracing for the worst.

Researchers have a less poetic name for it: the assumption of positive intent.

It means extending the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others. And it's not just feel-good fluff.

A study in the Journal of Happiness Studies ran 707 people across the US, Poland, and Japan through everyday scenarios: getting ignored by a coworker, or stood up at a café, kinda stuff.

The people who assumed the worst, who read hostility into the ambiguity, were less happy overall. The interpretation wasn't fixed. It was a habit. And habits can change.

But is it a burden? Does always assuming the best make you a sucker?

Well, here are some of my thoughts.

This Friday. Ump extends my son's baseball game. The kids fight back, go up by two. Five minutes left to close out the inning. Two quick outs, a strike on the third batter — and then the ump yells "time." Game over. Reverts to the previous inning. They lose.

Players and coaches lost their minds, asked for some discretion. Blah blah.

Meanwhile, another coach just shrugged and saw it for what it also was: a fast, electric inning where a bunch of kids got fired up and played their hearts out.

Same five minutes.

Two completely different lenses.

Years ago. I watched my boss walk into the CEO's office. Then talk to my manager. I spent the entire week certain they were building the case to fire me. I struggled to sleep, and focus? Fughetabout.

A whole week of my life torched by fear. And yet, nothing happened.

Rose-coloured glasses would've handed me that week back. Better yet, wtf do I still talk about it?

Think about your favourite heroes for a second.

• Ted Lasso, believing in a team that hated him.

• Samwise dragging Frodo up the mountain on pure faith.

• Leslie Knope, certain Pawnee is worth saving.

They all see through rose-coloured glasses. It's not a delusion (at least we don’t think so when watching it).

It's the belief that things can work out, which is the only thing that makes people try.

And the kicker is what it does to your power, your happiness.

Feel this one, since we’ve all been there:

Someone laughs in your vicinity.

Assume the worst, and it's an attack. You tense up, you shrink, “Well, fuck this person.”

Assume the best, and you laugh with them. Maybe they're nervous. Maybe they’re blown away to be in your company.

Either way, you stay calm, you stay in control.

You don’t have to carry that discomfort. Throw on the rose coloured glasses.

The Pebble

In BoJack Horseman, when he reveals to his then-girlfriend why she shouldn’t be in love with him, she responds, "When you look at someone through rose-coloured glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."

The quote from the show hit people hard. There are Reddit threads looking for its origin, and a full 30-minute YouTube breakdown on the problem with the statement.

(Okay — maybe don't wear them every second.)

The challenge
This week, put the glasses on. When something's ambiguous, like a short text, a weird look, or a call that got extended, reach for the most generous read first.

Assume positive intent.

Not because you're naive, but because the worst-case story was never free. It was costing you the whole time.