Are People Doing the Best They Can?
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Think of someone who fills you with frustration, disappointment, or resentment. Choose one person to consider before you read on.
Now, let me suggest that the person is doing the best they can.
“Nooooo!” you may be thinking. “They can do so much better! If they would just...”
If so, you’re in good company with social science researcher Brené Brown, whose reaction when her therapist suggested the same went like this:
“I think this conversation is total crap. That’s what I think. I think the idea that people are doing the best they can is also crap. I can’t believe I’m paying for this.”
Later that day, Brené witnessed a customer behaving rudely, with racist overtones, to a bank teller, insisting that her bank statement was wrong and demanding to see a supervisor of a different race. Afterwards, Brené, appalled, asked the bank teller if he thought that customer was doing her best.
He wasn’t upset. He shrugged and said he figured the customer was scared about her finances, and she was doing the best she could in her moment of fear. He was saying exactly what the therapist had said. Brené was amazed.
That month, Brené conducted forty interviews with friends, family and clients on the question, “Are people generally doing the best they can?” and then went on to do a formal research project with hundreds of documented, coded responses.
Her findings upended her previous conviction. She found that wholehearted people—people who are living authentically joyful lives—assume that everyone is doing the best they can.
At Wise Humanity, we call this the mental map of radical empathy: the assumption that given a person’s circumstances, their abilities, their energy level, their understanding of the world and the mental and emotional tools at their disposal, they are always doing the very best they can.
This is not a proposal for argument or a scientific fact. It’s about accepting a kind of tautology: if the person could do better, they would. When they choose to behave in a certain way, it is, by definition, the best they can do.
So, for example, if your teenage son avoids homework and instead spends hours playing video games, is he doing the best he can?
Let’s try saying yes. Perhaps he feels his teacher hates him, he’s wondering if he’s stupid, the young woman he likes is ignoring him, he has a huge pimple on his nose, he thinks he’s a disappointment to you, and he’s sure he can’t concentrate on work, so his best choice right now is to soothe himself with video games. His ideas may be wrong and he may need help, but he doesn’t see that right now. He’s doing the best he can.
If you find this idea impossible to accept, consider how you judge yourself. Brené’s research found that people who judge others as not doing their best also are harsh judges of themselves.
For example, in one of our workshops, a participant pushed back, saying “I don’t think people are always doing their best because I know I haven’t always done my best. I can think of a time when I knew I was doing the wrong thing, and I did it anyway.”
With radical empathy for himself, our workshop participant could reframe that memory this way: I did something I knew was wrong because I had a belief that it was necessary. I did my best in the struggle between two opposing beliefs. With hindsight, I know better, and next time I’ll choose differently. It was my best choice then, but it is not my best choice now.
When Brené teaches about “doing their best,” people in her workshops start to glimpse a completely new reality and new paths to go forward.
One woman said, “If this was true and my mother was doing the best she can, I would be grief-stricken. I’d rather be angry than sad, so it’s easier to believe she’s letting me down on purpose than to grieve the fact that my mother is never going to be who I need her to be.”
A corporate head said about one of his subordinates: “Crap...If he’s really doing the best he can, I’m a total jerk, and I need to stop harassing him and start helping him.”
Brené explains: “As crazy as it sounds, many of us will choose to stay in the resentment, disappointment, and frustration that come with believing people aren’t trying rather than face a difficult conversation about real deficits.”
The mention of “real deficits” reminds me of stories I’ve heard about how relieved families can feel when a member is given a medical term for their behavior. For example, before the autism spectrum was recognized by the medical community, parents would blame their child and themselves for the child’s norm-breaking behavior. But once the autism spectrum was recognized, the behavior was no longer blame-worthy. The children were doing the best they could. (And now, at least for some, these “deficits” turn into superpowers.)
Maybe we all need a diagnosis. Maybe our diagnosis is that we’re human, and we’re all doing the best we can.
Think again of the person you identified when you started reading this piece. Can you find a way to imagine that, given their mental and emotional tools at the moment, the person is doing their best?
If you’d like to read an excellent chapter explaining this way of thinking with more examples, get Brené Brown’s book, Rising Strong, and read Chapter Six, entitled “Sewer Rats and Scofflaws.”
