Letting go of trying to change others

I hope you’ve caught my soul boost on trying to change other people and this is something else I wanted to say a lot more about because it’s something we can find ourselves locked into in ways big and small.

We can set out to change everything from an opinion someone holds to what they are doing with their lives.  Sometimes it happens on a small scale, like when we start out having friendly, light hearted  banter about what the best film ever made is that starts to get a bit intense,  and sometimes the stakes get huge and feel all-consuming, as when try and stop people we love and care about making decisions that seem to us to be clearly designed to mess their lives up.

On a relatively small scale, if we are trying to change someone’s habits that we find irritating, what we are actually trying to do is control someone and bring them round to our way of doing or viewing.  The deeper truth is that no matter how thinly you slice it, there are always two sides to every story, or usually as many versions as there are people involved.  I can’t bear mess and clutter for example, but if you managed to watch that amazing documentary on the Kastam tribe, you’ll have seen that they believe that housework is a waste of time that is better spent on other things.  I’m sure that if we could find a way to get along, but I’m not sure we’d ever change each other’s point of view and that’s certainly not something I’d want to set out to do!

We can also set out to change someone else’s point of view because we can feel insecure within ourselves and secretly need others to validate what we think and feel.  Let’s say you’re a reflexologist and you love what you do and are very passionate about it, but you meet someone at a party who thinks it’s little more than a nice foot rub but it doesn’t go much beyond that .  You might find yourself getting sucked in to explaining in enormous detail all the wonderful things it can do and all the happy clients you’ve looked after, getting more and more upset inside as they won’t budge their opinion.  Actually, you know why you love it, your clients know why they come back to you and really that’s all that counts, but suddenly the opinion of someone you don’t know and may not ever meet again becomes the most important thing in the world – if you let it.

We can fall into the trap of making people our projects.  We meet someone and from where we stand, we see the person that they could be if only they’d do this that or the other, and from there on in we are on their case trying to bring them into line for their own good.  They might be a talented painter and we know that if only they would really push themselves, they might become a famous and respected artist.  Or, on a level that feels all consuming and scary, we might know someone we really care about is following a line of behaviour that seems totally self-destructive to us and we can’t bear the idea of them getting hurt or ruining their lives.  They might be a gambler who seems to lose every last penny in the betting shop but can’t stop and start running up debts to feed their addiction.  Even though we have every good reason to want them to change, there are very few areas where we can actually force anyone to do anything and if we do we are actually undermining their own power and ability to do things for themselves. We are each a unique soul with different soul lessons and by trying to change someone else we ignore the divine within them.

Also when we set out to change someone else for any reason, we might as well put our power in a box, gift wrap it and hand it over to them.  If this is something that we know that we consistently do in a way that actually has been detrimental to our own lives, we might have to do some exploration into why we keep running this pattern and how we can break out of it. It may be that we have fallen into the role of rescuer across the board as a way of getting love, approval or validation, which draws us into co-dependencies that are no good for us or the people we are hooked in with.

We can offer unconditional love, support, information, our opinion or anything else from a place that honours someone else’s right to find their way through this life as the unique soul that they are.  As you pull your energy back into your own centre, the relationship between you will change. By changing ourselves or a pattern in a relationship it changes the chemistry and shifts things. actually what we are aiming for is just to change our relationship to our own power and leave the outcome to settle in the place that is for the highest good of all, without any idea of what that might look like.  That is the most powerful place where everything – we, they and the relationship we have with them – can actually transform.

Loads of love,

Michele x