Love is greater than hurt feelings

Despite the title, I’m not advocating for being a jerk, but I also think there are times when some hard truths that lead to hurt feelings can be a good thing. In Annie Duke’s excellent book “ Quit “, she shares some insight on this from Daniel Kahneman:

When I asked Daniel Kahneman what he thinks the secret is to being a good quitter, he told me, “What everybody needs is the friend who really loves them but does not care much about hurt feelings in the moment.”

You break up with someone and, all of a sudden, your close friends tell you, “I thought you should have ditched them months ago.” Or you quit your job and people in your family say, “I could tell you were miserable. It sure took you a long time to figure that out.” Of course, when they tell us those things, we all have the same reaction: “If you knew that all along, why didn’t you say so earlier?” And the answer is always the same: “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” You can get over hearing that you should quit something. But if you spend months or years in a job or a relationship that’s not contributing to your long-term happiness, that’s time you can never get back.

Of course, being a jerk is easy to do and we’ve all seen it. I think this really goes back to Gary Vaynerchuk’s idea of “ kind candor “. If you want to truly be a good friend to someone, finding ways to speak…