The way you change your immediate reactions to things is that you catch yourself having an uncharitable/bigoted/overly judgmental thought and you catch it and replace it and then you do that a hundred times a day for your whole life and eventually one day like five years later you realize that you think differently now and you’ll always be working on something but that’s how life goes and that’s fine.
Say you have a bad habit of thinking all other people are stupider than you and want to respect other people’s intelligence more.
So you start paying attention to your immediate first reactions to things. You notice that when other people around you are struggling with a math problem and ask you for help you default to seeing them as annoying and stupid.
Instead of chastising yourself for having that thought, interrogate it. Replace it. Think, why do I assume people with different strengths are dumber than I am? I need help sometimes too. I’m glad they’re comfortable enough with me to ask me for help. I’m glad I’ve got a reputation of being the math guy and can help people with that.
And the first time, perhaps the first few dozen times, it’ll feel disingenuous. The cynicism in your brain will fight it. But in time it’ll become as easy as breathing. First thought, replace thought.
And then one day you don’t need to replace that thought. That might be a month from now or twenty years from now. And it’s annoying to get there. But you do get there.
