People will treat you
as decent as you are,
and even if they are not
as decent as you are,
they will treat you
as if they were.

Change "people" to "pets," and yer GTG.

Pets don't lie.

When I'm meeting a new client and am determining whether or not I will work with them, I pay more attention to their pets than I do to them because their pets tell me about the kind of person they are.

As to the idea, I have discovered that when I feel I wasn't treated right, I had actually given them permission to treat me wrong by something that was already wrong with me.

And while I'm not totally certain this applies to every personal situation, I have been noticing that it applies the more I look at myself rather than getting angry at others. I found that anger has the power to fixate attention upon the object of anger rather than on me. The more I have been noticing the flaws in myself, the better others treat me.

The nearest Biblical parallel I know of is the parable of the log and the speck, however I did not come upon this idea from the Bible, but rather my own direct personal experience.

Don't worry about how others treat you. Worry about how you treat them. In the end, when we stand before our Lord God and King for judgement... we won't be judged on what other did. We will be judged on what we did or did not do. I've seen decent people treated terribly, I've seen really terrible people treated like they are royalty. I've seen terrible people do amazingly wonderful things in a moment and people I thought were trustworthy betray that trust in some horrific ways. It is the sad state of our fallen nature. Practice the great virtues (1) humility, (2) charity, (3) chastity, (4) gratitude, (5) temperance, (6) patience, and (7) diligence. Do it in spite of this world that will mock you. Thank the Lord for when you are treated horribly for doing these things. Do not lie. Do not cave into those who have no integrity. Pray for them in great humility.

I'm not worried.

As I get older, I've been using how I'm treated more and more as an indicator of what is wrong in me. I know this sounds totally counterintuitive, but I think I might be onto something.

Although she was a devout atheist, I'm a big fan of the writings of Ayn Rand because of her strong sense of right and wrong, good and evil. She described a principle which she called "The Sanction of the Victim". Basically it is people will do to you whatever you grant them your permission to do. This shifts personal responsibility onto my thoughts, emotions, and actions, and I think that is where it might rightfully belong.

It is actually the premise of Christianity.

However, it was to change a society, and not guaranteed at the individual level. At the individual level you could expected to be treated like crap, but you were still expected to carry on being nice, and eventually people would be won over.

I don't think on the scale of changing society, because as an individual I don't possess that power.

However, I do think on terms of direct real world face to face personal interactions, because there is where I have lots of power and also bear personal responsibility. And from my own personal experience, it is where that principle seems to hold the strongest.

Thank God it's been avery long time since anyone treated me like crap, and the last time it happened what was wrong in me had granted them permission to do so. So it was ultimately not their fault at all but mine. They were simply opportunistic.

The more I have become aware of how this principle operates, the more my life has smoothed out.