What If They Never Change

In this episode of Pearls of Wisdom, I explore our desire for other people to change!

We often find ourselves thinking that if our partner, parent, child, friend, colleague or boss would just behave differently, we could finally feel happier, calmer or more at ease!

But we disempower ourselves when our wellbeing becomes dependent on somebody else changing.

I explore the difference between judgement and observation, and how our judgements are so often shaped by our own conditioning, beliefs, history and unresolved reactions. 

When we become still enough to observe rather than immediately judge, we create space for greater wisdom and clarity.

I also ask

What if they never change?

Acceptance doesn't mean having no boundaries. It doesn't mean tolerating behaviour that isn't right for us. We can ask for behaviour changes, create boundaries, change the nature of a relationship or leave altogether.

But we can do these things from presence rather than reactivity.

When we stop trying to change another person and begin investigating our own patterns, something shifts. We change our position in the relationship, and the relationship itself must then respond to that change.

Ultimately, we cannot control another person's journey.

But we can become conscious of our own.

And freedom begins when we realise:

My peace does not require your transformation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Can you accept this person as they are? Absolutely as they are. And if you can get to this place of acceptance, and that again comes from greater observation rather than judgment, seeing what's happening, seeing what's happening with yourself in it, if you can come to a place of acceptance. Pearls of wisdom to change. Welcome to another episode of Pearls of Wisdom. Today I am going to investigate change and wanting another person to change. I think it's so common for people to say, Oh, if only they would change. In you know, in all manner of different circumstances in life, I think people often often want their partner to change, their colleagues, their boss, their friends. It's everywhere. And it's something that you know, working with people over many, many, many years, people have brought in the the complaints, as it were, of other people, and it's just a very, very, very common thing. And that doesn't mean that behaviour of other people isn't difficult. It doesn't mean that people aren't acting out, it doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of chaos going on because of the people around us, their behaviour, whether it's our children, our parents, our partners, our friends, our anybody. So it isn't that. There isn't this experience going on. But if our well-being depends on other people changing, really and truly we are handing our power over. And it isn't the way, as anyone who's worked with me knows, that obviously I will hear all the stories and everything that's happening and the history, all the stories in the past, the immediate difficulty, but we'll always come back to working with ourselves. We always come back at some level to what if they never change? What if these people never change? So, from that perspective, first of all, it's important to recognise that a lot of the time we're coming from a place of judgment. And when there's judgment going on, if we're looking at somebody and saying, you know, they're so selfish and they're absolutely impossible and they're inconsiderate and you know, all manner of things, even though I'm not saying I'm not saying people don't behave in ways that impact and you know don't help if you're in a life together or a project together, all manner of things. However, when we're when we're putting on that the person is selfish or has an agenda or is you know all manner of things, what we're doing is coming from our conditioning, and we're putting uh a judgment on who we think that person is. We're saying we think you're you know inconsiderate and selfish because you're doing this, this, this, and therefore there's a tension because there is there is a judgment, it it comes from um, yeah, generally comes from our conditioning and our history and all the things that have gone on in our life, which is why we're seeing through that filter, if we can move firstly to a place of observation, and instead of immediately having an idea of what that behaviour is, you know, selfish, horrible, mean, all of these things, instead of having that, if we come back initially, I'm not saying behaviors aren't those things, however, there's a as I say, there's a degree of reactivity and a degree of tension and a degree of it coming from our conditioning, and we're seeing through a filter. So if we can press pause and come back and observe what's going on and observe what's happening, and instead of saying, you know, the the judgment onto somebody, instead just say, you know, what's happening here, what's happening in this situation, what's happening in this dynamic, then something else happens, where it's more spacious, and we can act from a place of wisdom because there still need may need actions to be taken, but more and more if we can come back to observation, come back to stillness, come back to clearing as always, because if we're going through the filter of our own um yeah, our own conditioning, our own patterns, our own programs, then ultimately we're we're seeing it through the filter of our own our own um lens. Um, and actually, first of all, we need to come back always. I'll I'll re I'll come back to this, but we need to come back to the breath, press pause, breathe, come back to the present moment, and then we can look at what's happening rather than what we think that person is being or doing. Because we can then ask the question, you know, why do I want this person to change? Is it literally simply just to make my life more comfortable? Is it because I feel that if they did this differently or didn't do that, my life would be better? Or is it genuinely for their well-being? And that's something just to query, because even if we can genuinely answer that it's for their well-being, even then we still need to come back to observing it rather than thinking we know best, because ultimately a person is on their own path, we don't actually know the path another treads, and therefore, we might offer some ideas, we might offer guidance, we might suggest things, but even if we think that the change we're suggesting is for their well-being, when we try to force another person or do it from a position of that we do know best, ultimately we we are not allowing them their unfolding of their path and their journey. And so there is that querying, what what is our motivation? But even if our motivation is for their well-being, that still can be coming from conditioning, it still can be coming from our own filter. And really and truly, to come to go deeper into this, it's asking the question: say we're living with somebody or we're working with somebody or they're our friend. We need to say, you know, what if these this person never changes? What if this person isn't going to change? Can I accept this person? And it's not, you know, should I or ought I or any of those things? It's can I accept this person exactly as they are? And that can be a difficult journey. I understand that. Um, as I say, I'm familiar with working with this with people and myself, I'll come on to that. But um ultimately, can you accept this person as they are, absolutely as they are? And if you can get to this place of acceptance, and that again comes from greater observation rather than judgment, seeing what's happening, seeing what's happening with yourself in it. If you can come to a place of acceptance, that's one um that's one position. Also, you could also come to the the um kind of awareness that no, I can't live with this, I don't want to, I'm not prepared to live with this, so I'll leave the job, the the relationship, the situation you're in. So actually both both of these things do lead to freedom, because if you can absolutely accept, then you can be in the situation, you can absolutely be where you are, you can work with your own presence, you can work with clearing your own reactivity, and uh or you can decide to leave, and both do lead to freedom. I know that this is this is a very short 20-minute podcast, so there's there's more complexities in all of that, but at the deepest and most simple level, that is it. Um and of course, acceptance doesn't mean you don't have some boundaries, it doesn't mean you won't ask you know for some behaviour changes, it doesn't mean you won't communicate consciously that you might want some change, even it from the place of acceptance, because it's a very different position being in complete acceptance to having the the need that the other change changes for your well-being. And what acceptance does is it does stop any internal argument. So when you are absolutely in a place of acceptance, then you have the space to decide. You can completely accept things as they are, you can decide to have some conscious communication where you speak consciously with the person about the changes that you know would make a difference for you. But it's from a place of conscious, conscious presence and not with even an a desire for change, which all these sound slightly oxymoron, because they're that they sound like two things going on at once. But actually, what's happening is you're coming more and more to self-responsibility, to presence, because you can decide from that place, from a place of the present moment from communication that's now, because often when you're coming from a place of judgment and reactivity, you're actually coming from your history and from the past, and reactivity is always a reenaction of the past. So coming back to acceptance, the presence, to the breath means that you are communicating here and now, and then there's likely to be more conscious dialogue, each person hearing each other, so it changes how you communicate. And always, always, always before you have any conversation, before you have any make any decisions, you work with the clearing. So that means if the person's behaviour is triggering you, you look at pressing pause, taking the breath, clearing your reactivity, breathe, feel the feeling disperse, clear, clear, clear. And of course, there can be an investigation into what it's triggering in you, and therefore you can do healing at a deeper level because you can recognise it as a pattern, a dynamic that you've experienced before, but it's so important to clear. I I, as I said, I was going to share some of my own experience was with this particularly. I I lived um for a few years with um somebody who gambled and was quite an addictive gambler, and I loved him very much. And essentially, I at first found the gambling very, very hard and um used to feel reactive to it, and then I got to a position where I was kind of policing everything, policing the money, policing the whole thing, so that wasn't great the same quite so big dramas, but that was very, very codependent, of course. And then I worked more and more and more on um clearing my reactivity when the cycle happened because there would be you know a lot huge losses of money and all sorts of things. And I really worked and worked and worked and worked to the point where I wasn't reactive and I co totally accepted this person, um, his behaviour, everything. But what it did was I came to the came to the realisation that however much I loved him, I I had to go. I had to go because I didn't want to live with the gambling, and that came through um acceptance, it came through lots of work, lots of inner work, and was very transformative for me on that level, and it had to be, and it was, you know, there was obviously any of these things, there's loss in it because I I left somebody I loved, but it it was it came about through inner work because I really accepted that the path, I don't know the path that he was treading. I don't, it's not for me to ultimately know what any of our path is. We're here to experience all different things, and therefore it is you know really powerful when we get to that place of acceptance because we are free. We are free to recognise that it's um it's all about us at the end of the day, it's all all us to do the the the inner change. Um now I know that that's uh my stories uh other people might say yes, but it you know, we've got much more um commitments, there's lots of things that people have, they have families and houses and all the things. So I recognise that the choice might not be to leave a situation, but it is recognising that it is our we can make a difference and we can get more peace when we work with our acceptance rather than living in this eternal cycle of hoping someone else is going to change that can just cause such pain, and it's um it's all really important that we do look at the mirror because you know, really everything is a mirror of us, and if we start to re recognize and move from you know the a boundary with somebody coming from a place of presence, it's very different to a boundary from a kind of a reactive place. When we're reactive, we're we're going, you know, we're angry, the whole thing goes in a cycle, we insist on this kind of change, we insist this person does or doesn't do something, and often then they'll go and do the thing in secret, or the whole thing doesn't necessarily play out well, or there's a stress both sides. Um, whereas if we create our boundaries from presence, then something different happens because it is an inner boundary, and also we'll know whether, like in my case, we have to leave a situation or we can accept it, or we can work with the person, and we can work in a different way with our communication, more from a conscious place. And really and truly, we need to look at whether there is a dynamic that's played out many times, you know, look at see and see whether we've had this same pattern the way we want the person to change and the behaviour is the same or the dynamics the same. Has it played out before? You know, really have an investigation. Has it played out with um you know, other partners? Has it played out with friends? Has it played out in our workplace? Have we found this goes round and round? Because I've often found in my work with people that they'll have a situation in a workplace and they'll have the difficult person and they'll leave the workplace and then they'll have to go to another one, and then there's the difficult person. And I remember working with clients where they suddenly went, Oh, I've moved to three different places, and there's always been the difficult person. And then within a work and looking at the dynamic and not in not in a self-blame way, but in an investigative way, okay, so what can I shift in me? What is this dynamic? What can I do? What you know, what am I being invited to investigate inside? What's what is there repeatedly being shown for me to see? Because ultimately it is the inner inner change that makes the difference. And when we see there's a dynamic that's going on, so we always feel um that somebody isn't listening to us or isn't you listening to our point of view. Simplically, we can look, you know, that's this that's quite an uh simple kind of um uh kind of example where we can look in and say, okay, so we feel that our big brother or sister never listened to us, or our mother never listened to us, and therefore we'll have internalized that very young, and we will be seeing through the filter, so we might be doing something, or we will be doing something that we'll see something differently, we'll we'll project that that person hasn't listened when really they they may have done, or they have a different way of hearing and they've taken it in, but there's because they didn't stay long enough, or they started talking quite quickly before the sentence was finished, all manner of things that mean we're very quick to see that feel that we're having the same thing happening. Whereas when we heal the bit inside that feels unheard and go within, very we'll have a very different thing go on. We won't be projecting that that onto the person in front of us, so we won't be judging them, you know, that they're not listening or they're self-absorbed or they're you know never available or whatever. Um, and even if they are behaving in that way, we won't be reacting to it, so therefore, we're in a better position to have the conscious dialogue and you know, create yeah, create the different boundaries from that place of presence. Because I often use the kind of example or the metaphor that if you're sitting opposite somebody chatting away, and the person gets up because they're going to go and make a cup of tea or something, and they're over in a different place in the room to carry on having the conversation, the other person has to swivel round to have the conversation or look round, and basically that is what happens with inner change, um, or they stop talking, you know, because ultimately within a change, we make some inner change. Uh, actually, people do either they leave or we leave the situation because we've we've moved so far, or they they come closer because they make a change to keep being in communication with us. So, really, it is um you know, it is about being the change, be the change that we want to see, and as as Gandhi says, be the change we want to see in the world, because the whole process of of investigation and inner awareness makes all the difference, and then we're not hoping others will change. As I said, that doesn't mean we won't have conscious dialogue, we won't from that place of acceptance from doing the inner work ourselves, from always being aware that reactivity is always an arrow to the past. And if we're if we're reactive about anybody's behaviour, and then immediately what's going to happen is it's going to be judgment, not observation. So always, always, always clear first. Press pause, breathe deeply, feel it to heal it, clear it, come back to presence, and then you're not going to be projecting from that place onto whatever anybody else is doing. It comes, you'll see it, you'll observe it. As I said, we all observe what's happening. Spaciousness is there, you see what's happening, you can act from wisdom. It's a very, very, very different position, and then your inner peace doesn't actually require other people to change. It requires that you are in a space of um inner ease yourself. It requires you transform. When you transform, you will have that inner ease rather than hoping that you need another to change to be happy.