It's really about training your mind automatically to give the benefit of the doubt and think positively...because if not it can be a very hard life. There are some in my family that right away think of bad intentions of everybody due to their prior circumstances, and have become so embittered with others (as in a form of road rage and screaming at people inside the car). When I ask "why don't you give the benefit of the doubt? That person in the car could've had an emergency, she could be driving slow because she lost a contact lense, etc." One of them says "When you always give the benefit of the doubt, you become gullible and people take advantage of you."

To a certain degree I believe this is true, but if you don't have much control over a situation anyway - it would be better to think compassionately (even though the good story might not always be the case).

I worked at Cintas in Maple Grove, MN. The first-shift supervisor and the stockroom team lead were both petty, angry, rude, negative, had very bad attitudes, were mean, cruel, vindictive, sarcastic and overall both very negative... it was highly depressing to work around them everyday for eight hours. It made me feel miserable, to say the least. I did the right thing and got out of there! This article is so true!

Attribution of negative intentions to other people's behavior is usually more projection than accurate assessment. If you feel negative, you're likely to assume other people do, too.

But the more important point is that compassion should not be confused with trust. "Compassion" means "to suffer with," that is, to be humane. You can be compassionate to the powerlessness an aggressive driver must feel while not trusting that driver to drive well. You would then feel more humane while driving more safely - the best of both worlds.

My parents, who are 85 and 83, don't know what to do about my brother, who is 56, and who moved into their house four years ago. He's on disability for a pain problem that he says prevents him from working, but that doesn't prevent him from doing a lot of gardening around their house and from spending every dime on flea market items.

The problem is that he can't afford to move out on the meagre disability pay that he gets. He buys things at flea markets and has cluttered and filthied up their house with his purchases. He already has two storage rooms that he rents to store the things from his former apartment. (Four years ago, he lost his tiny studio apt. when the landlord evicted him to gentrify the 2-apt. building.)

My parents don't have a lot of money, and my brother is ruining their life. He insists that they buy him a house, but they can't afford to. They could afford to buy him a small condo in another state, but he refuses to move there. He has temper tantrums all the time. I believe he doesn't have any friends, either.

My parents don't know what to do with him. I keep trying to think of ideas to solve their problem but I am clueless. I try to reason with him, but he is always hanging up on me. (I live far away from them.)

Thanks for any suggestions you have.

Sally