Conscious Relationships: Accepting Others as They are

Wouldn’t life be wonderful if everyone just behaved exactly like we wanted them to? Our friends, co-workers, partners and family just did exactly what we told them to and behaved exactly how we expected them to? Ok, so that probably has about as much of a chance of happening as pigs flying does.

Even though most of us know that we cannot expect people in our lives to behave exactly like we wish they would, so many of us waste much of our precious energy and time trying to force our own agenda on the people in our lives. And when they don’t comply, we waste even more time and energy being sad, angry or frustrated by the fact that they are not acting exactly like we thought they should have.

Not only does this constant struggle to make people be who we want them to be leave us feeling unhappy and unfulfilled, but it also causes problems in our relationships with them. When people feel controlled or manipulated into changing, it is most likely that they will get defensive and upset and do exactly the opposite of what we want them to. Isn’t that how we would act if someone was doing the same to us?

Anytime we feel hurt or upset by someone else’s behavior not being what we ourselves would have done, it is assured that we are taking their behavior personally. Maybe a stranger forgot to say “Excuse me” when they walked by, or maybe a friend forgot about a lunch date we had with them, or our spouse didn’t remember to make the bed before they went to work in the morning.

Whatever the case may be, when we impose our idea on others and allow it to upset us when they don’t behave according to our idea, we are not only letting our ego take over and convindo-not-let-behaviour-of-others-destroy-your-inner-peacece us that they are in the “wrong”, but we are also sitting in complete resistance of the “what is.”

This means we are upset and offended by something that most likely was NOT intended to be a personal attack and we are allowing ourselves to be victims. Anytime we let the actions of another person control our emotions to the point that we are offended, angry, etc… we have given them the power to disturb our peace.

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