While putting your grocery cart back is great, it really is the bare minimum indicator that you might be a good person. Everyone’s aware of this, and even though you put your grocery cart back with the outward nonchalance indicative of the no-brainer that it is, on the inside, you can’t help but wonder if anyone happened to see you and now thinks you’re a good person. Here’s how you can break out of this mindset and put your grocery cart back without internally inflating your own ego the next time you’re at the grocery store.
Remember that you’re doing the bare minimum.
You’re putting a grocery cart back, not curing cancer. Anyone who’s at least a semi-decent person does this. Redirect your thoughts away from wondering if anyone is watching you from their car and slowly starting to fall in love with your tender heart, and focus on the fact that you just said no when the cashier asked if you “wanted to donate 25 cents to end childhood hunger”.
Quickly scan your surroundings beforehand.
If you don’t have enough mental fortitude to stop yourself from wondering if anyone is watching you complete a basic task and developing an unreasonably high opinion of you, then consider taking preventative steps to halt this kind of thinking before it even starts. If you glance around the parking lot beforehand and make a mental note that it is completely empty, you will be less inclined to fabricate overtly favorable fantasies about yourself from the perspective of an admiring stranger when you put your grocery cart back.
Make your partner do it.
If all else fails, remove yourself from the situation entirely. While at first, this might seem like a cop out, it’s actually helpful in more than one way. First, by avoiding putting the grocery cart back all together, you side-step any self-admiring thoughts about your own goodness that might come with doing so. Second, you might be thinking, “Isn’t it selfish of me to make somebody else put the grocery cart back for me?” The answer is no, it’s actually really nice of you. This is because now your partner gets to feel like they’re the good person for doing it. At its core, it’s a truly selfless act of kindness and really does make you a good person, whether or not a stranger can see it.
So the next time you’re replacing your grocery cart, remind yourself that you’re not doing anything special, this is just basic human decency, and no one is ogling you from their car, wondering how you became such an exceptional human being. And if that doesn’t work, just leave it in the middle of the parking lot!
