When was the last time you got told no? How did you feel? most likely you felt sad, angry , you probably hated that person just for the fact that they said no. However, do you know how that person felt?  That person  probably had a hard time making the decision but since you were the one who got told no, you probably  think of that person as the villain of the story.  Throughout the Podcast “ The Influence You”  by Hidden Brain, there are a lot of scenarios given showing  how people often underestimate the pressure we put on others. For example Vannesa Bohns was talking about the experiment “Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving,”  where people were asked to “ vandalize” a library book by writing the word pickle  by a stranger for a joke. Surprisingly 64% of the people tested were influenced to vandalize the library book. This means that only 46%  were capable of saying no to a stranger , how crazy.  All through the podcast there was the idea that most people have this egocentric bias feeling in them where we usually tend to just put the stress on us and we forget what we are causing others to feel.

In March of this year my grandma got sick of covid ( my dad’s mother). In Ecuador during this time things were really bad, there weren’t enough beds in the hospitals, not enough oxygen tanks and people were constantly dying day after day. I video chat with my  dad everyday and he was telling me how my grandma was in my aunt’s house with an oxygen tank but that it was nothing extreme. One night out of all my dad tells me “call your grandma , talk to her, she will enjoy talking to someone”  Before that day me and my grandma didn’t have any real conversation since the last time I was in Ecuador which was like 4 years ago. That day, just because my dad tells me I was like why not let me just talk to her. We talked for about 2 hours and it was a blast, we were laughing, she was putting me on the family gossip. After that daY, I tried calling her but no answer and I thought “oh she’s probably busy or sleeping”. The next day after me calling her she was admitted to the hospital because of how bad she was feeling. Little did I know that was the last day I was able to talk to her. If it wasn’t for my dad telling me to call her I probably would have never had talked to her. As much as it hurts, I’m so glad I was able  to say ‘goodbye: to her.