Knowing Me, Knowing You (Understanding) w/ Gretchen Rubin

When I was growing up, I remember my Mom telling me about, or maybe it was in school hearing about The Golden Rule. Does anyone out there remember The Golden Rule? If you do, go ahead, say it out loud. The Golden Rule is…

Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

Or some of you might know it from Matthew or Luke in the bible, “Do to others what you want them to do to you.”

Or from Muhammad in Islam who said, “Seek for mankind that of which you are desirous for yourself.”

And then of course there was Jafar, “You’ve heard of the golden rule haven’t you? Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.”

Ok, maybe not that last one. But as you can see, this rule exists in many forms and places. So for clarity, I thought maybe we’d check with the internet source that knows all, Wikipedia.

“The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated. It is a maxim of altruism seen in many human religions and human cultures.”

Well, there you go. That seems to validate what we just spoke about. But…Wikipedia goes on.
“It can also be explained from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, sociology, human evolution, and economics. Psychologically, it involves a person empathizing with others.”

Now here’s where I would dare challenge Wikipedia *gasp*…

“Empathizing with others”. By definition, to empathize is to understand the feelings of another. To put yourself into the shoes of another, not to assume they are wearing your shoes. See, where the Golden Rule falters, like big time, is that everyone is not like you.
Ultimately The Golden Rule sounds nice, but from an effectiveness standpoint, it’s a total crapshoot. Sure, there’s the rare chance that the person you are “treating” is just like you. But in most cases, they are not. And even if there are a few times when they are just like you — do you really want your ability to respect, support, love, empower, appreciate, and influence others to be a matter of chance? Or you would prefer it to be a matter of, understanding?

In this latest episode of Where There’s Smoke, we upgrade the Golden Rule. And not just to the relatively known Platinum Rule, but to a metal that is virtually indestructible.

We are joined on that journey by author and speaker Gretchen Rubin, and use her personality framework, The Four Tendencies, to deepen our understanding on how we can get better at understanding.