People Can’t Be Changed.

People can’t be changed.

It’s taken me a long time to realize that. And the beginning of that understanding came with a large amount of frustration. It still does.

Some of it might have come from me misunderstanding the word “persistence”. Or thinking of things as an “all or nothing” scenario. Or more fundamentally, just needing someone else’s approval.

People can’t be changed. Not the way you want them to change.

And so the books say, you can only change yourself. Which I think is where some of the frustration also came from, am I the one that needs to change in order to resolve this disagreement? Ask yourself that enough times and you can’t help but feel the bitterness take over.

Just like I don’t like being convinced of something I don’t really believe, what makes me any different trying to convince someone else to change. And so if we are to accept that, we open ourselves up to disappointment. To understanding that the we aren’t as powerful as we wish we were. But we overlook another truth, that we are actually more powerful than we can ever imagine, it’s just not outwards, it’s inwards. Is this where I say we need to change ourselves? No. This is where I say, we need to respect ourselves. I’ve learned to take those moments of disappointment and ask myself, Why? To understand that these moments of disappointment are unavoidable, they will come and they may suck, but they are also to be expected. When things aren’t surprises anymore, you can plan for them. And that’s pretty empowering. Because when we stop trying to change others, it usually means that we’ve started to accept who we are ourselves.

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