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Baby steps

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Changes in our lives can be overwhelming if we try to do too much at once.  Instead, try baby steps.

So many things change in our lives.  Some of them we have some control over, and others just happen to us.  Either way, changes can be stressful.  And the bigger they are, the more stressful they can be.  Graduation, marriage, having a baby, changing careers, buying a house; there are so many of them.

Sometimes, when these changes happen, we can get carried away trying to plan way too far in advance.  When we do this, we let ourselves get overwhelmed by all that is happening.  Instead, try looking at what’s coming in the immediate future.  What do you have to do to prepare for this change in the next week?  What about the next month?  Can you look at the next three months without it swamping you?

Pick a time frame that is manageable for you, and focus only on that time frame.  All of a sudden, it makes a huge change seem a lot more like a series of small changes, and that is much easier to deal with.

What can you control?

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It’s not a great feeling to have your life out of control, but that’s usually the way it is.  We would like to be able to control lots of things in our lives, but that just isn’t realistic.  Most of us are familiar with the saying “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  I had this hanging on my wall when I was growing up, but I have to admit I didn’t really give it that much thought.

How much can you really control?  The answer is: not much.  We can control our own behavior, and how we choose to react when things happen to us.  It’s hard, but we can do it.  And really, that’s about all we can do.  Our lives are just one event after another of someone else’s choices affecting us, and then us having to decide how we are going to react.

What that saying means to me is this:  focus on what I can change, which is my own attitude, and have the strength to make the hard choices to have the best attitude possible, then just let the rest happen.  Otherwise we spend so much time and energy trying to control things, and failing, and feeling frustrated at our failure.  Which of those seems like a better option to you?

One problem at a time

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How much do you really want to worry about?  How much can you control?  Let’s face it, most of the problems that come up in your life are out of your control.  So what do you do about it?  It’s fine to think one step ahead.  A little bit of planning can help you when things don’t go your way.  But it’s easy to go too far.

Do you believe that everything will work out in the end?  That’s the first step, because you have to believe that things turn out okay.  Sure, things will go wrong along the way, and most things won’t go according to your plans, but they will end up working out.

So you’re stressing about something that’s coming up.  You know that it may not go your way, so you think about what might go wrong.  Then you think about the next thing that might go wrong.  Then the next “what if, what if, what if.”  This could go on forever, but what are you really accomplishing?

Think one step ahead so you’re ready, then just accept that everything else will work itself out, or you will just deal with the new issues as they come up.  Worrying about them doesn’t help anything.

The first time I ran away

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I always felt that I was actually an adult, even when I was a little boy.  I wanted nothing more than to be independent.  My first chance at independence came when I was 2 years old.  I was in the front yard with my mom when the phone rang.  She went in the house to answer it, and when she came out, I was gone.

We lived five doors down from the nearest cross street.  She looked up towards that street, just in time to see my blonde hair bouncing out of sight around the corner.  She ran after me, and brought me back home.

I have no idea where I thought I was going, but I knew I wanted to go.  It took me another 16 years before I actually moved out.

 

How to predict the future

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I have an easy trick for predicting what people will do in the future.  Look at what they did in the past.  They will do the same thing.

We have a tendency to expect people to change, especially when they are doing things that we don’t like, or that are hurtful to us.  However, people almost never change.  People are who they are, and they always will be.  They will continue to do whatever they did in the past.

The next time you are surprised when someone close to you does or says something bad to you, stop and think about it.  Should you really be surprised?  I bet they have done the same thing in the past.  And I will guarantee they will do the same thing again in the future.

So prepare yourself the next time.  Remember what they did, and expect them to do it again.  It makes it easier to deal with someone else’s bad behavior if you’re not surprised by it.

Consider the source

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You will always have people giving you relationship advice, but how do you decide what advice to listen to?  Consider the source.

As you get to know more people, you will come to realize that most married people are not happily married, and even most people who are dating aren’t really that happy with the person they are with.  However, many of these people still feel qualified to give you advice about relationships.

Think about it this way; if your friend is always fixing her own car, but her car never runs right, would you listen to her advice about what is wrong with your car?  No, you wouldn’t.  So why do we listen to relationship advice from people who have never had a healthy, happy relationship?

Lots of people will give you their opinions on lots of things, and there is nothing wrong with that.  People like to share, and most of the time, I think that they mean well, and are really trying to help you.  But just because they mean well doesn’t mean that you should listen to what they have to say.  The next time someone is giving you advice about your relationships, look at their relationships before you consider how valid that advice really is.

Who are you pleasing?

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Name all the people who you have the ability to make happy.  I’ll give you a hint; look in a mirror.  You are the only person who you can make happy, because happiness is a personal choice.

We spend so much time making our choices based on what other people think, but are those choices really pleasing the other people?  If you think about it, you know that they’re not, so why do we keep doing it?  I’m not talking about being nice or helping others.  Basic human kindness is good for everyone.  I’m talking about when we sacrifice what we want to try to please the other people in our lives.

It can be hard to know where to draw the line.  You don’t want to be selfish.  You want to be kind, and to help people.  So how do you know when it’s too much.  Basically, if it gets to the point where you are sacrificing who you are, or what you believe in, then it’s time to stop.  In order to know this, you have to know who you are, and what you believe, which can be hard to do.

A relationship doesn’t have to be a perfect 50-50 split, but it can’t be so unbalanced that it hurts you.  Do your best to be good to the people around you, but know it’s time to protect yourself, and realize that you can’t actually make anyone else happy.

 

Shared Values

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We have so many people come and go through our lives.  How do we choose which ones to share our lives with, and which ones we are better off without.  For me, shared values is a major factor.

What do I mean by shared values?  Ask yourself what is really important to you, on a base level.  What are your morals and values?  How important are they to you?

There are many people you will know who don’t share your values, but it doesn’t matter.  Maybe it doesn’t matter because it isn’t that important a relationship.  Maybe it doesn’t matter because the value in question is a minor one.  With each relationship, you need to evaluate how much it matters.

And even if you decide that it doesn’t matter, you should still keep in mind how their values differ from yours.  For instance, if you know that someone doesn’t share your value for honesty, it doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with them.  It does mean that you should never forget that at any moment they may not be honest with you.

Sometimes, you will realize that your values and the other person’s values do not align in a way that really matters to you.  When this happens, it’s time to end the relationship.  Most people will not understand if you do this.  Each person typically feels that what they do is okay, so if you end a relationship because their values don’t align with yours, they will generally feel that you are the one that is wrong.  And this is okay.  You don’t need anyone else’s approval when you’re making your decisions based on your values.

Forgiveness takes forever

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Forgiveness isn’t an action.  It’s a process, and it can take forever.

Emotional hurt is different from physical hurt.  You can’t see it.  There is no physical scar; no bruise; no dent that you can take to the body shop and get fixed.  Emotional pain will sneak up on you for a long time; maybe forever.

People are going to hurt you in your life.  There is no avoiding that.  Every time someone does something that is hurtful to you, you have to make a choice.  You can choose to hold onto the hurt and be angry, or you can make a choice to forgive them.  It’s perfectly fine to be mad at first.  It’s natural to have an angry response to someone hurting you.  But the only way to get over the pain is to choose forgiveness.

The problem comes in later, after you’ve forgiven the person.  You can think that you’ve gotten over it, then something happens that triggers the pain, and all of a sudden you’re having an emotional reaction and you don’t know why.  Then you have to make the same choice again; to be mad or to renew the forgiveness.  It kind of doesn’t seem fair.  Someone does something to hurt you, and you’re the one who has to spend time and energy, maybe for years, continuing to forgive them.

But think about the alternative of staying angry.  If you’re mad at someone, what do they feel?  They don’t feel anything.  They can’t feel your anger.  It has no effect on them at all.  All it does is hurt you.  It doesn’t feel good to be mad.  It’s stressful to yourself, and to the people you care about.

Either way you choose, you have to live with some amount of discomfort.  You either deal with the triggers of the past hurt, and repeatedly choose forgiveness, or you choose to stay angry, and you deal with the stress that that choice will add to your life.

I choose to live my life on my own terms.  I choose to live my life on purpose.  I choose forgiveness.  What will you choose?

If you love me, why do you hurt me?

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How are you supposed to be okay when someone who is supposed to love you does things that are hurtful to you?  We expect certain things from the people in our lives, but sometimes they don’t live up to those expectations.  Sometimes, they fall so short of those expectations that it causes us pain.

Just because someone tells you that they love you doesn’t mean they won’t hurt you.  But just like anyone else doing hurtful things to you, it really isn’t about you.  It’s about them.  Shouldn’t they be able to think about your feelings, since they love you?  You would think so, wouldn’t you?  Yet somehow, they don’t.

When a parent hurts a child, when a partner cheats on someone they love, when anyone does a hurtful thing to someone who they say they love, that person is acting out of their own place of pain.  Does it mean they don’t love you?  No.  Does it mean that even though they love you, they will hurt you again?  Yes.

So what can you do?  How can you protect yourself from the hurt?  The best solution is to put as much distance between yourself and the person who is hurting you as possible.  If it isn’t possible to put physical distance between you, you can work on creating emotional distance.  The less you need someone, the less they can hurt you.

The other thing you can do is to realize that it really doesn’t have anything to do with you.  This is so hard to remember when you’re feeling the pain, because you are the one feeling the pain, so how can it not be about you?  But it really isn’t.  It really doesn’t have anything to do with you.  Their behavior is so self-involved that you don’t even factor into the thought process.  Maybe they’ll feel bad about it later, or maybe they won’t, but either way, it isn’t about you; it’s about them.

You need to know that you cannot change this person.  If they ever do change, which is unlikely, they will do so because they choose to.  This is not a choice that you can make for them.  People do what is in their nature, and if it’s in their nature to hurt you, then that is what they will do.

So many of us have been hurt by people while they tell us that they love us.  That is such a hard pain to get over.  In many ways, it’s worse than being hurt by a stranger.  But it has happened before, and it will happen again, and since you can’t change it, the only thing you can do is learn how to protect yourself emotionally from it.  This is one area where I believe strongly in getting professional help.  This type of hurt can be too hard to deal with on your own.  Work on it yourself, but get outside help if you need it.  It isn’t healthy to carry this pain around with you for the rest of your life.