Understanding Intentions

​​​​​​​Intention is internal, and internal is not obvious. How does a person understand his own intentions? How do people understand the intentions of other people?

Notation of intent

A person’s intentions are far from always clear to him, especially since they are often not adequately understood by the interlocutor. To prevent unconscious manipulations, misunderstandings and conflicts, it is recommended to use the designation of intentions more often.

Double standard in evaluating yourself and others

The usual way for a mass person to raise their self-esteem:

• embellish their intentions, present in a favorable light for themselves, or judge themselves not by (unsuccessful) actions, but by (good) intentions.
• see the intentions of others through a negative lens, or judge not by their (good) intentions, but by their (bad) deeds. See Double standard in judging yourself and others.

Stories from life

dad is not bad

Written by Larisa Kim.

Not very long ago, I learned to admit my mistakes and always began to do so when I was wrong. I say directly:I did wrong. It’s not scary to make mistakes, it’s scary not to admit mistakes. I am an ordinary person, and people make mistakes. Now I’ll think about how to fix the situation». More importantly, it helps me to understand other people when they make mistakes — and not get angry at them. And even explain to others so that they do not get angry. Surprisingly, this is easiest to explain to children, not adults.

The following situation happened recently. The husband came to school for his daughter, but she was not there. He ran along the corridors — there is no child. He asked the teacher where his daughter was, she said: «Someone has already taken her.» And he went into hysterics. He called me on the phone, shouting and cursing. Then he called his grandfather and woman, found out that they had taken it, but he could no longer calm down. He went to them for a child, yelled at his daughter all the way SO that her head ached.

I come home from work, the child is in tears, the father, without ceasing, saws her and yells. In the end, he left to park the car, I took her to bed, and she asks me: “Mom, why is our dad so angry and bad?” — What would you say to a child? Why is he so bad? So yelled?

I said this: “Dad is not bad. When he came to school and found out you were gone, he was scared to death. He thought of the worst thing, that you were kidnapped. And now we don’t know if we’ll ever find you. And dad became ill, he does not know how to express his grief in a different way. He starts screaming, shouting out everything he feels, blaming others. This is all from the fact that he was not taught to release emotions correctly. He is not to blame for this, we will forgive dad for this.

But we will think for the future if we ourselves find ourselves in such a situation that it is not right to react in this way. No one is good for this. At first, dad was scared, now he feels bad and feels guilty, but at the same time he doesn’t know how to ask for forgiveness either.

The daughter could not sleep when her husband returned, she rushed to him and began to say that she understood why dad screamed so much that she was not angry with him, but loved him very much. The husband was speechless immediately, the burden of guilt fell from him, and he, too, was already able to calmly explain his reaction to her himself.