The bloody shoulds destroy relationships and self-esteem.
Blame, shame, victimhood, guilt … often create terrible destruction and rarely anything positive.
Blaming Others
The only way for a person to be happy is to stop blaming others and outside circumstances for their unhappiness. You have to take responsibility for how you react to the words and actions of other people. People’s behavior is one thing. Your reaction to it is all about you and nothing at all to do with them.
If you want a great relationship with someone, you have to create it and make it a priority.
You have to love, honor, accept, and appreciate the other person just the way they are. Of course, they have to do the same for your.
Developing kindness, compassion, caring, and being conscientious of how your words and actions affect others is something you (as in all people) simply have to learn how to do if you ever want great relationships.
The problem for most people is that it is impossible to do those things for another until one learns to do it for themselves – meaning you have to love, honor, accept, and appreciate yourself. You have to see your own brilliance. You also have to see your shortcomings and love yourself anyway.
When you can do that, others will also. That’s just how it works.
It took me years to figure all this out and apply it in my own life by truly learning to love and appreciate myself.
Shoulds Destroy Relationships
Emotional distress happens when you have unrealistic expectations of yourself and others or are attached to how you think you and they “should” be behaving. When they (or you) don’t behave the way you think they “should,” you get upset. It’s human nature. It is also something everyone needs to learn to get over.
When you get angry, upset, or sad because someone didn’t behave the way you think they “should” have, that is a great opportunity to take a long hard look, heal, and release, the underlying cause of your anger or sadness. The current circumstance is simply a mirror showing you something that is still “broken” within. It is never about the other person or situation. It is always about the one reacting.
People have good days and bad days. They are imperfect. Sometimes they are fun and interesting and other times they are grumpy. Sometimes they have energy to do things and other days they can barely get out of bed. That is just the truth.
Some people are night owls while other are morning people. Some people are naturally more kind. Kindness is really important to me.
Think Before You Speak
If someone is mean, calls people names, is constantly judging, complaining about, and criticizing others, I simply refuse to hang out with them. They obviously are not showing honor or respect for those other people.
If the people you tend to hang out with act this way, it’s time for new friends. It’s also time to look in the mirror because people are often drawn to people much like themselves. You have to learn to think about how it would feel if someone said that to you, before you speak it out loud. Check out this article on Living the Golden Rule – the rule book I follow in life.
If you have done something unkind, then recognize it, forgive yourself first, then apologize, and move on. In the future, think before you speak or act.
Learning and growing is why we are here. We don’t expect a toddler to always be nice or know how to do everything already. Yet we expect ourselves, and others, to do everything perfectly all the time. When in truth, we are all just learning and growing.
This is a little saying I came up with some time ago:
“They are doing the best they can with what they’ve got
Be it what they’ve experienced or what they’ve been taught.”
In every given moment, we are all doing the best we can. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Yes, we could all do better. But because of stress, environment, fears, limiting beliefs, judgments, expectations, attachments to outcomes, shame, blame, victimhood, and guilt, we behave less than best a great deal of the time. We can beat ourselves and others up over this forever. Or we can let it go, forgive, and move on.
We are also greatly influenced by the expectations of others. If someone thinks we always screw up, we tend to screw up. If someone thinks we are brilliant, we tend to be brilliant. How you are viewed in the eyes and unspoken beliefs of those you surround yourself with does have an impact on you – whether beneficial or detrimental.
They did a study a long time ago. I am not remembering all the details, but this was the gist of it: A teacher was given the name of each of her new students for the school year along with their locker number. However the teacher was told that the locker number was the student’s IQ. Whether the teacher openly treated students differently with what she thought was a higher IQ or if she simply had higher expectations of those students with high numbers and lesser expectations of those with low numbers, at the end of the year the student scores matched her expectations. Even for children who usually got A’s, if their number was lower, they got lower grades.
How you believe people are is how they behave in your presence. If you think people are jerks, then you tend to be surrounded by jerks. A lot of it has to do with your own beliefs and expectations. When you change, the experiences you have with others changes as well.
Feed Your Mind the Right Things
We are comprised of 70 to 80% water. The studies by Masaru Emoto showed dramatic shifts in water structure by simply taping different words (written in Japanese Kanje / calligraphy) on a glass of water. http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/water-crystal.html Check out the images, they are fascinating.
Hate caused severe distortion. Love caused extraordinarily beautiful and intricate crystalline structure. Music, news, conversation all have a real tangible effect on your body and therefore your mind and emotions. What you feed your mind matters. Who you surround yourself with matters. How you speak to others and how you let them speak to you matters. What you listen to, even your self talk, all makes a huge difference in how well you do in life and your level of happiness and success.
Many success experts say that you are the sum total of the 5 people you spend the most time with. When you are stuck and wanting to change, the first thing to do is change who you hang out with. If you can’t do that physically, then do it through audio, video, and books. I know a very successful woman who used to read the autobiography’s of very famous people and then, in her mind, pretend that those people were sitting around a table talking with her – her own mental board room. She had “gotten into their head” by reading all about them and then started having conversations, asking questions, making decisions as if they were her friends and advisers. The famous book, Think and Grow Rich, would suggest something similar.
I used to listen to audios and read books by my favorite spiritual teacher. On my way to and from work, I listened to his words of wisdom. I read and listened so often that sometimes I would suddenly hear him say a line or two in my head. It was very empowering and eventually helped me find the courage to leave an incredibly stressful career environment and head out into the unknown to find joy, passion, and my true life’s calling.
Now, with the Magnificent U Foundation Course, I’ve created a way for people to take a deep dive into my work, read my words and hear my voice, related to personal and spiritual growth, energy healing, inspiration, new thoughts and perspectives about life, to truly become empowered and find their own courage to become magnificent and have greater relationships and a more meaningful life experience.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like this one on getting stuck in the negative thinking spin and the others mentioned at the bottom of it. As well as this article about the Golden Rule and education.
May you experience magnificent relationships,
I have a jar of bubbles in the closet but can’t do this. I have early morning stimulating conversations with 2 great friends that start my day off. I also post a morning inspiration on my page that stays with me throughout the day. Amazing video.
This is wonderful! I think this is a great way to start the day.
Great post and video. I agree, how we begin our day sets the tone for the rest of the day. Before we just wake up and begin our daily To Do list we need to take time for ourselves and set the tone for how we want our day to go.
I have learned that it is better to just smile when faced with stressful situations. I have been doing more of that lately and my friends think I am crazy for not freaking out in certain situations
Stress is one of the hardest things in life to control, meditation is definitely the answer! Loved the bubble show, she is amazing!!
Starting your day right can make all the difference in the world in the rest of your day. My favorite way to start my day is to open my Bible and study God’s Word, then take time to pray for God’s direction and guidance as well as lifting others up for God’s special blessings.
Definitely adjust our attitude. You reap what you sow so better be sowing good things in these situations! 🙂