We’ve all heard the adage, “Do unto others as you would do to yourself.” Well I’m here to postulate that, we are making a mistake when we treat others as we would prefer.

Recently, I had some issues with a friend of mine. We stayed close due to mutual friends, but it seemed like we were always just getting on each others nerves.

One of the more cogent examples of our disconnect was demonstrated in the way we approached criticism.  She would often say things that I thought were insensitive. Sometimes, she would provide unsolicited comments about my outfits or my actions, which I found hurtful. At the same time, I always got the feeling that she perceived me as a little clingy. When she asked me for honest feedback about what she was doing, I was more likely to tell her that everything was fine. In my mind, I was being a supportive friend by boosting her self-esteem, but she told me that I was being dishonest.

“I don’t understand,” I complained to one of our mutual friends. “I’m working so hard to be a good friend!”

Given enough time, our friendship would have dissolved, had it not been for one thing: the Myers Briggs personality test. The test not only launched my strange obsession with personality tests, but helped me understand what was going wrong in our relationship.

On the personality profile for her type, the ENTJ, it read that she “needs to consciously work on recognizing the value of being sensitive towards other’s feelings.”At the same time, my personality profile, the ENFJ, stated that I could be “extremely sensitive to criticism.” All it took was one personality test, and I immediately understood why I wasn’t clicking with the girl who’d been an enigma to me for years.

Just like that, our problems were solved. When I needed intense emotional support, I went to someone else, and she stopped expecting me to give her straight criticism. At the same time, I worked harder to remember that she gave me feedback out of love.

The problems in our friendship stemmed, not from a lack of effort on either side, but from a fundamental misunderstanding between us. It wasn’t that either of us were bad friends, we just had different definitions of what what being a good friend meant.
I’m not trying say that the Myers Briggs test will solve every problem. The Myers Briggs personality test is not infallible or even accurate for everyone. Even though it is not perfect, the test is still helpful in that it provides at least some degree of insight into others.

I am also not trying to say that the saying, “do unto others…” is completely invalid. Its core tenant, which I interpret to be, “don’t expect others to be nice to you if you aren’t nice to them,” is still a good rule to live by.

The problem with most interpretations of the saying is that they assume that all people think alike and have the same needs. If my friend and I had continued to treat each other as we wanted to be treated, our friendship would have fallen apart. In order to make meaningful connections with other people, we need to understand that they think differently than we do.

As humans, we are exposed to an incredible diversity of personality types and value systems. Just because we think differently than someone else doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. In fact, some of my most fulfilling relationships have been with people whose mode of thought expanded my worldview. But in order for these relationships to work, we can’t hold others to the same standard that we hold ourselves. We need to make an effort to understand others in order to comprehend what they need from us. Only then can we truly do unto others as they would do unto themselves.