Time and again I watch men and women constantly pointing their fingers at the other person. They spend all their time and energy trying to change what the other person is doing. Both men and women believe that if the other person would just be kinder, talk more, stop raging, complaining, controlling or (fill in the blank) then everything else would be fine. They then spend the next ten years trying to get their partner to make those changes.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this seldom -- if ever -- works.
Trying to change another person will never work. In fact, it can’t work. It can’t work because no one has the power to change someone else. We can ask, plead, beg, bully, rage, try to force them to do what we want them to do, yet in the end they get to decide. In the end, they decide what they will do and how they will do it. No amount of pleading or screaming will change the fact that they choose their behaviors.
And, likewise, no one can make you change either. Only you have the power to change yourself. Only you decide what you will or won’t do. Even if your partner is bullying you, raging and in your face threatening you—ultimately you still decide. You decide if you will cower, give in, stand your ground, stay, go and everything in between. You decide.
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