Have you ever had that moment when you discover someone thinks poorly of you, despite your best intentions?

I recently bumped into an old colleague who could barely meet my eyes. Later, I learned they believed I had intentionally undermined them during a project years ago – a project where I thought I was being helpful by taking on extra work.

We're all villains in someone else's narrative. Not because we're genuinely bad people, but because perspectives are as unique as fingerprints.

What looks like confidence to one person appears as arrogance to another. Our well-meaning honesty might feel like cruelty to someone in a vulnerable moment.

Your own life story. There's probably that one ex who broke your heart, that friend who betrayed your trust, or that parent who never understood you. To you, they're the antagonists of specific chapters in your life.

But in their own stories? They might be the heroes making tough choices, or simply flawed humans doing their best with what they knew at the time.

This isn't about absolving ourselves of responsibility or dismissing the impact we have on others. Rather, it's about understanding that human relationships are beautifully complex.

We can be both the nurturing friend who drops everything to help someone in crisis and the thoughtless colleague who forgot to reply to an important email.

You're tempted to paint someone as entirely good or bad, remember – we're all crafting our own narratives, and sometimes, inevitably, we cast each other in roles we never meant to play.

What matters isn't avoiding being the "bad guy" in someone's story – that's impossible. What matters is staying true to our values while remaining humble enough to learn from how others perceive us.

After all, accepting that we might be the villain in someone else's story doesn't make us bad people – it makes us human.