If you’re anything like me, you like to hold people in your life to a standard that you would follow. I start many of my sentences with “I would have done it like this…” and I have realized that although I mean well, I am only setting myself up for disappointment when I want people to operate the way I would.
Do you ever find yourself doing the same thing?
Well, I must admit that it’s taking me at least a decade to get to this point and I am still learning how to do this right here –
Accepting people for who they are and who they are NOT.
Holding people to an expectation to respond differently, react differently, act differently than they normally would, can not only be frustrating but taxing on our emotions. Disappointment happens after what we expected to happen failed to occur. I had this “a ha” moment where I realized that I am only hurting myself every time I expect (insert family member, friend, loved one, co-worker or boss here) to act differently than before.
“Why do I keep doing this to myself?” I thought.
I would become infuriated with people in my life after they consistently disappointed me with their actions, reactions or lack thereof. Let me clear that most of the time it’s a family member or loved one so it’s not as simple to sever the relationship. That’s when I came to this conclusion –
“Maria, you cannot change them but you can change yourself and your expectation of them.”
Too often we like to hold people to standards that they may never meet because that isn’t who they are. We are asking someone to be someone who they are not. We can either accept it and deal with them accordingly or we can continue to allow them to steal our peace every time they fail to meet the mark.
I know it’s not easy as we want people (particularly our loved ones) to be the perfect mother, father, brother, sister, cousin or niece, but in order for us to have peace with others we must learn to let go of the façade which we have created in our minds. We have to learn to deal with people the way they are, not the way that we hope they’ll be.
This does not mean that I am telling to allow continuous irresponsible, hurtful or disrespectful behavior in your life. I want you to learn to accept people in your life for who they are and who they are NOT so that you can live in peace, instead of allowing someone else’s behavior to stress you.
You have a legacy to achieve, a purpose to live out and a promising future to work towards. The last thing you need is to keep giving that person permission to anger you.
Refuse to allow someone’s junk to frustrate your joy. Remember that hurt people, hurt people and those hurt people can be in our families, circle of friends or in our workplace. We cannot save them from their hurt, we cannot make them change and we cannot control who they are. We can only control ourselves and how we choose to respond to them.
So who is it in your life that you need to accept for who they are? Or better yet, who is it in your life that you need to accept for who they are not?
I’m doing it and I must say it feels good to FINALLY get it. You can too!
XOXO,
Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy