The real golden rule isn’t “treat people as you’d like to be treated.” It’s a combination of two things. First, treat people as they’d like to be treated. And second, make sure you let people know how you’d like to be treated.
Those two things aren’t the same! If you treat people how you’d like to be treated, sometimes you run up against preferences that are very different from your own. You may be being less kind than you think. And in turn, you’re setting unrealistic expectations for yourself. “I treated all these people like this; why won’t they do the same for me?”
Maybe because they’re treating you how they’d like to be treated – which isn’t how you’d like to be treated at all. But they have no idea, because you’ve never told them.
The biggest barrier between most people and kindness isn’t selfishness – it’s ignorance. They want to do good, but they often simply don’t know what’s best in any given scenario. Clarity is kindness, so if you want kindness from others, be clear about what that looks like for you. People will step up more often than you’d expect.
The Opportunity Machine 