When faced with people's bad behaviour, turn around and ask when you have acted like that. — Edith Eva Eger

When faced with people's bad behaviour, turn around and ask when you have acted like that.

Author: Edith Eva Eger

Insight: Most of us have a sharp eye for spotting when someone else is being selfish, defensive, or cruel. It's easy to catalog their flaws and feel justified in our judgment. But Eger's suggestion does something unsettling—it flips the mirror around. Before you settle into righteous frustration, you have to ask yourself: haven't you done something similar? Maybe not in that exact moment, maybe not in that exact way, but the core impulse? Yeah, probably. This isn't about making excuses for bad behavior or becoming a doormat. It's about recognizing that most of our worst qualities aren't alien to us. They're part of the human toolkit we all carry. When you genuinely remember a time you acted out of fear, anger, or need in a way that hurt someone, something shifts. Judgment softens into something more useful: understanding. And understanding doesn't mean accepting everything—it means you can respond from clarity rather than from that hot, defensive place where most conflicts actually get worse. The practical payoff is real. When you can acknowledge your own capacity for the behavior bothering you, you become harder to manipulate, less likely to escalate, and genuinely better at changing situations that matter to you.