So it's easy for us to laugh from the sidelines... knowing that we would never make those mistakes ourselves... (oh, the naivete) but we're all making critical

So it's easy for us to laugh from the sidelines... knowing that we would never make those mistakes ourselves... (oh, the naivete) but we're all making critical mistakes, and only very few of us are introspective enough to realize what our real weak points are. A lot of these mistakes sound exactly like ones I would make, particularly #1-2. People, in general, tend to be pessimistic and overly wary of "strangers" but overtrusting of individuals. The same syndrome is seen in politics, where people have a negative view of "politicians" but think highly of their own representatives-- this is why incumbents have such a major advantage. One irony is that people who have great character tend often to be poor judges of others' character, because they don't have the "spider sense" that indicates a sketchy character. If you're like this (and a lot of people are) you need to find the rare people who have good character but who are able to detect bad character in others, and ask for their opinions of someone before trusting that person with too much.