6 Things You Want To Know About Disrespectful And Unkind People
This will help you to understand and withstand them - and not turn into one of them
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INSIGHT
6 Things You Want To Know About Disrespectful And Unkind People
This will help you to understand and withstand them - and not turn into one of them
“Respect isn't earned, it's given.”
A lot of people don’t understand this.
The customer in the supermarket whistled as if for a dog, to get the saleswoman to the cheese counter so that he could order cheese. “Excuse me, but I am not a dog! Have you no respect?”, the woman asked. “No, I have no respect for anyone”, the customer replied.
"These are the kind of stories of human behavior we experience every day here in the market", explains the saleswoman. People have become rude, disrespectful, and impatient. "After the pandemic, it only got worse", she said. I heard the same story from the woman in my local bakery and the server at my café.
I get pretty upset and annoyed about disrespectful behavior and I keep thinking about it, which doesn’t help. Respect for each other is an important base in any form of social interaction.
What Is Respect
By respect, we mean that people are impelled to treat each other as individuals of goodwill and competence, even if they do not privately believe it.
Respect means thinking and showing positivity to others. It proclaims the other person as a person of value.
People quickly underestimate the impact on human behavior when we show respect.
I realized what helps to counteract the anger when thinking about unkind, disrespectful people is to understand where this kind of behavior comes from. Respectively, we can think differently about the rude person, get a different perspective, and respond in some situations accordingly.
Here are 6 reasons why people behave disrespectfully and unkindly to others. Knowing this, you better understand them, avoid them, or respond appropriately to them.
1. Consider Our Hectic And Stressful Environment
We can’t deny it, we live in a fast-paced, stressed-out world. This turns us into rude humans.
In some ways, modern life has made us unkind.
We are stressed every day, feel under pressure, and “have no time” for anything. We become annoyed with the stress and hectic atmosphere around us and our reaction can be short-tempered, rude, even unfriendly. Such behavior doesn’t help anyone. Not yourself, and not the people you encounter.
We fell for the popular notion that the pandemic made people more aware, less self-centered, and kinder. The current reality seems to be quite the contrary. “Unkindness has profound personal effects. And if we can build a kinder society, that would make life better for everyone”, writes Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic.
There is a sweeping scientific case for kindness. The Bedari Kindness Institute at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) investigates questions such as “What are the implications of kindness? What are the relationships between kindness and the way the brain functions?”
I bet each of us can feel how our hustle culture makes us impatient with others. Being aware of this helped me to hold myself back when I was about to get short-tempered with others. I take a breath, pause, and change my attitude and tone of voice.
2. Lack Of Self-Respect
Before you can respect others, you have to respect yourself. You can't think positively about others if you don't think positively about yourself.
People who are disrespectful to others, often tend to also lack self-respect. Knowing that gives me a whole different perspective on unkind, disrespectful people.
Self-respect means having confidence and behaving with dignity. When you respect yourself, you believe that you're worthy of being respected and appreciated. This is the base to be able to accept the respect that others have for you. If you don’t understand the positive effects that respect has on a person, you don’t behave respectfully.
A person who respects themselves will treat others the way they want to be treated.
3. The Negative Impact Of Social Media On Our Personality
For all the good stuff the internet and social media have done for us, they have also made us more selfish, less self-confident, and more socially isolated.
It is easier to be a jerk when you can hide behind a digital screen or an anonymous social media platform where you don’t need to show your face or even use your real name.
When you encounter disrespectful, unkind people, they probably spend a lot of time scrolling through their platforms instead of using that time learning about themselves, investing in their personal development, and socializing with real friends.
4. Bad Listeners
Disrespectful people want to listen to themselves and are not really that interested in listening to others. They are not really paying attention. They don’t make or keep eye contact, don’t ask many questions, they think about what they want to say next instead of actively listening, Not listening demonstrates to the other person that you don’t value what they have to say.
Let them talk and leave. If you don’t want to end up as a disrespectful listener as well, do the opposite of the above.
5. Lack Of Curiosity
If you are curious you are open-minded and use situations as learning opportunities. You want to know the other person's perspective because doing so will help to broaden your own.
As you expand your horizons past your own experiences you show respect for the value of the experiences of others.
6. Lack Of Politeness
The lack of politeness today can be shocking.
“A coffee!”, “Give me this loaf of bread!”. Greeting people, and saying “Thank you” or “Please” are simple, good manners in daily life, at home, and at work. But good manners are getting lost. What is happening? Society seems to be forgetting how to be nice to other people.
You can find people being impolite wherever you look.
Daily stress, pressure, and the hectic tempo of modern life can lead us to neglect basic courtesy and manners that are the foundation of good, positive human and social interaction.
So…why not counteract this trend? Say extra thank you and emphasize your greetings – so the impolite person you are addressing gets perhaps a little hint and feels appreciated.
It may seem obvious. But it’s always good to be reminded: Everyone should be treated with respect.
And if we remember to include good manners and kindness in our daily interactions with everyone we will all be better off.
IMPULSES
Curated stories on the topic of slowing down and stressing less, designed to open up new ways of looking at why you should give yourself permission to un-rush.
Why A World Fixated On Getting Things Done Quickly Makes Us Lonely
The lost art of building respectful human connections
In a world that is always in a hurry, building a connection with the people around you is not easy.
People don't take the time anymore to remember your face in the bakery, to talk to their neighbors and get to know them, to have a conversation with their guests at the hotel to make them feel welcome and comfortable. Don't you enjoy it when the staff at your café, lunch place, or restaurant recognize you?
Being recognized, being greeted warmly, and having a connection - these are all human make-us-feel-good behaviors. Positive relationships are crucial to our survival. They are important to humanity’s collective knowledge, progress, and joy. Yet, we are facing a decline in real human connectivity which has grown so severe that loneliness has been declared a public health threat in the same way as smoking, obesity, and addiction.
Read on for some impulses on the art of building respectful human connections and its importance.
Stop Trying To Raise Successful Kids - And Start Raising Kind Ones
Instead of getting so upset about impolite, ill-mannered, unkind people around us we should go to the root and start from scratch. Raising the youngest ones in our society to be kind human beings.
Adam Grant the organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and author of Think Again, Originals and Give and Take writes about the real test of parenting is not what your children achieve, but who they become and how they treat others. If you teach them to be kind, you’re not only setting your kids up for success. You’re setting up the kids around them, too.
Parents now pay more attention to individual achievement and happiness than anything else. However much we praise kindness and caring, we’re not actually showing our kids that we value these traits. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that kindness appears to be in decline.
Read about research on this topic, the behavior of parents and kids in today’s world, well described by Adam Grant.
As always, very true words.