The Danger Of Having Good Intentions
Having good intentions will not lead anyone anywhere unless they come in connection with action. But it is also important to resist acting too fast as this can lead to unwelcome consequences that can prevent you from achieving your goal.
We trade with good intentions because we want to be the best for someone, but the end result may not always be what we expected. We often make decisions based on emotions and naively believe that anything is possible if it comes from the heart.
Things do not always go the way we want. You can have good intentions, but it can still end up hurting someone. Before proceeding to the work, you should reflect on what you are doing, if you can really do it and what the consequences may be.
When actions destroy good intentions
Even though we constantly hear things like “if you can dream it, you can achieve it” and “nothing is impossible” , there are things that you can not achieve just because you want to.
If good intentions are not followed by the necessary knowledge, this can become dangerous. The decision you make can affect both yourself and the people you love, and you may hurt them even if you did not mean to.
If you had wanted to operate on a sick family member to save his life, you would have needed more than good intentions; you would have needed appropriate knowledge. Otherwise you would have killed the person despite your good intentions.
Dunning-Kruger effects
The Dunning-Kruger effect says that the less you know about something, the more you think you know. People who know very little about a particular subject may feel competent without being aware of their ignorance. Psychologists have often been told that “I know more about psychology than you do, even though I have never studied it.”
The same thing can happen with the actions we take or the advice we give others even if we think of their best interests. People who start a business where they think they only need to have good intentions and not any appropriate knowledge will just put themselves in trouble.
We get stuck in our ideas
When you only look in one direction, it is difficult to open your eyes to other horizons. Conflicting ideas are difficult to put together, causing tension. Therefore, we usually overlook other perspectives and only create space for the views we like best.
The cognitive dissonance effect explains that having conflicting thoughts like “I think I do good things for other people” and “People often tell me that what I do can be harmful” creates an internal tension that must be removed.
Due to the functions of the mind, it is difficult to break from our predetermined sentences. When someone contradicts our point of view, the most natural response is to quickly neutralize this by finding support for our point of view or discrediting the person who came up with the idea. For some people, this defensive exercise has become so automatic that they are not even aware that they are performing this act.
When the cognitive dissonance is mixed with the Dunning-Kruger effect, a destructive result can be obtained. There is nothing more dangerous than an ignorant person who believes that he can achieve everything, but who refuses to see other perspectives than his own.
The importance of knowledge
In some aspects of life, having good intentions is not enough. When it comes to something important such as health or well-being, this must be related to professional and ethical knowledge.
Many people may have good intentions, but remember that this is not always enough. Reflecting before you shop and getting advice from an expert can be more beneficial than being guided by beautiful, seductive and dangerous words.
