During the first few weeks Terry Crews was on set for The Expendables, he felt miserable. While the actors were in the major action scenes, his character was playing a minor role. He was brought in as a replacement for Wesley Snipes, and chosen for the role because of his muscles. He sat around in his hotel room and trailer stewing about how racist Hollywood was. 

One day, he thought to himself, “Maybe this is racism and maybe it’s not, but you won’t know unless you give it your all.”

Terry started showing up on set every day and talked to more people. He went from barely knowing the franchise’s co-creator, Sylvester Stallone, to talking through scenes on set every day. Stallone loved Crews’s energy, and rewrote the script to highlight him. He even made Crews’s character save everyone else during the climax of the movie.

While there is certainly truth to Terry’s original appraisal that Hollywood was racist, he didn’t know if this was the case here. Instead, he decided to find out for himself by changing his approach. His actions created an acceptance prophecy, one where Stallone and the rest of the crew reciprocated his warmth and positive energy. Crews writes in Tough, “Given the large amount of racism that does exist in Hollywood, it doesn’t serve me to go looking for it when it isn’t there.” 

Your past experiences, current circumstances, or mental health, could cause you to project rejection onto ambiguity. In Platonic, Marisa Franco explains, “The more unworthy we feel, the more likely we are to underestimate how much others like us.” 

Most times, you’ll never really know what other people are thinking. If you assume that every misunderstanding is a rejection, or an ethical transgression, you’re going to miss out on a lot of opportunities. 

Instead of sitting back and stewing, it might be more helpful for you to see for yourself whether people are really being racist, sexist, or discriminatory—or if they just didn’t know you well enough yet.