"You made the decision you believed was right at that stage." A cousin's words, quoted by Dr. Saad Al-Arifi (1:05:08)
From the episode
- Your role. Part of your duty to your friends is to restore their balance when a crisis hits.
- Look at them. Keep eye contact. Don't look around, don't pull out your phone while he is burning in front of you.
- Don't criticise. "It's your own fault" does not restore balance, it destroys it further.
- Judge by yesterday's information. A man blamed himself for a decision that went wrong. A cousin told him: you are right; you chose what looked best at the time. Like someone who buys a share on strong news and sees it fall a month later.
- Keep his dignity. Pass on advice in a way that preserves his dignity. At school a friend "comforted" a classmate who had left two questions blank: "Don't worry, the resit was made for you and your kind." The meaning was kind; the wording was not.
- The future is good. Finally, show him that what is coming is good.
Words that wound in hospitals
- The hidden crown. Health is described as the hidden crown: only those who lose it know its worth.
- A flood of stories. After he posted a clip about harsh words from medical staff, messages poured in.
- "Who told you he'll wake up?" A daughter asked a doctor how her father would be when he woke from his stroke.
- "May the others be blessed." A mother asked about her sick newborn. The doctor asked whether she had other children: "you have three, may they be blessed, don't count on this one". The child is three years old today.
- "Graduate from life." A student revising for her final exams in hospital was told she might "graduate from life".
- Kind words heal. He says gentle words genuinely help recovery.
- Visitors too. A visitor leaving a sick man told his son: if your father dies, bury him in the village cemetery with his parents.
- What to say. "There's nothing wrong with you" hurts a patient, who wants to feel understood. Say "may God heal you" instead.
The idea, explained
Judging a decision by its result
His cousin's words, "you made the right call with what you knew then", correct a well-documented error: outcome bias, judging the quality of a decision by how it turned out rather than by the information available when it was made (Baron & Hershey, 1988). A good decision can end badly; reminding a friend of that removes the extra weight of self-blame.
The four moves
| Do | Avoid |
|---|---|
| Look at him; put the phone away | Glancing around while he talks |
| Listen without criticising | "It's your own fault" |
| Judge the decision by what he knew then | Hindsight verdicts |
| Advise in a way that keeps his dignity | "The resit was made for people like you" |
Words in hospitals
He says kind words help healing. Reviews of trials in which doctors were trained to communicate with more warmth and clarity find small but real improvements in patients' health outcomes (Kelley et al., 2014). A careless sentence at a bedside is remembered for years; the mother whose son is three today still remembers hers.
Try it
Key terms
Psychological balance · Outcome bias · Bedside manner · Health, the hidden crown.