How often do you misinterpret facts and your opinion?

One of the rules of journalism is objectivity. This means a journalist should learn to report on the facts of a situation, not their opinion about what occurred.

As you can probably guess, this kind of unbiased reporting is challenging because all actions and experiences are evaluated through the eyes of the beholder.

Now, while you might not be a journalist, learning to view situations through a journalistic lens can be quite beneficial for you. Your ability to separate facts from your opinion has the potential to alleviate much heartache.

But how do you develop an objective, journalistic view of life?

The best way is to ask, is this true? And then, very quickly, follow up with how do I know?

If you don’t have a concrete answer after asking the preceding questions, you know you’re skating on thin ice, and you’re probably infusing a situation with your opinion. You are very quickly moving from fact to fiction.

The not-so-funny thing is that, to some extent, we are all living in our fictitious worlds. Worlds where we all create our own narrative about what we think is happening. And that’s okay, except for when it begins to cause problems.

You can see the problems coming when you begin to guess what you think someone said versus what they said or what you think might have occurred in a particular situation versus what really happened.

When you find yourself working to over-interpret a conversation or event is when you’re most likely to lose journalistic integrity.

Now, it goes without saying that there’s absolutely no need for you to act or think like a journalist, and you can go through life just fine interpreting events as you see fit. But, if you do, then you’ll also leave yourself open to falling prey to emotional highs and lows based on your subjective view of events versus a feeling of calmness that comes with an objective viewpoint.

So, the next time you’re faced with a situation that’s causing you stress, and you find yourself overthinking it, be like a journalist and ask, what are the facts? Once you untangle the facts from fiction, then hopefully, you’ll alleviate yourself from some heartache by coming to a conclusion that’s as close to the truth as you can get.

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