There are many things we can do to offset the impact of the constant judgments that our unconscious makes whenever we encounter a person, a behavior, or a belief system or values that are different from our own. When we find ourselves thinking, “How could they _________________?” (fill in the blank with just about anything that strikes you as weird or hard to understand or confounding or whatever), remember that your judgment often comes from having no experience with someone who thinks, believes or does that. Or it could be that you had an experience that was negative, so you tend to judge all similar experiences by that one. One step we can take is to be open to meeting, being around, making friends with people who are different from you. We can read, watch films, hang out downtown, go to a different coffee shop, travel – a lot of things can give us insight to others as well as into our own reactions to difference.
One thing you can do is:
My first reaction to this graphic was, “I don’t get it.” I got the expose yourself to culture part, but not the US, Malaysia, Venezuela part. Turns out it’s the meaning of yellow in each country.
Yellow underwear in the US has a completely different meaning than “lucky”…..
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