#164 and something very obvious

Extremely obvious point of the day: "People want other people to care about them." Well, duh. Enormous Duh. This is based on a quote of the day about how what annoys us in other people reveals a lot about ourselves. Yeah, that's true. Another huge Duh. The people who annoy me most are the ones that don't care about me and situations in which I feel ignored are harder to endure than most. The people that I appreciate the most are the once who sincerely do care (sincerely is very important, to me that means they care about what's best for me, not just their own sense of power.)
Anyway, it occurred to me that other people probably feel the same way, wanting me to genuinely care. So, to be practical, I decided I would intentionally check my motivation in what I said to other people. Usually, since I do everything indirectly, things I say or write to other people tends to be roped around an attempt to be vulnerable and offer whoever it is an opportunity to understand and hopefully get some sense of sympathy or admiration. Even though I really want understanding from other people, this method had never worked and usually leads to some incredibly painful consequence for me. So what I did today was I asked, "Is this going to benefit so-and-so or is it attempt to try to be vulnerable with so-and-so." I've actually done this before, but it was really encouraging to remember this again. Right now, anything encouraging, no matter how basic it is, helps.