If only my husband would stop coming home in a bad mood. If only my kids would clean their rooms and get better grades. If only my girlfriend would delete single guys friends from her Instagram. If only my boyfriend would stop bringing up my past mistakes. If only my parents would be less controlling. If only. Let me shift your perspective on this. Your power lies only within yourself and you only have control of what’s happening inside of you, and subsequently how it manifests through your actions and your words.
Trying to change the people around you in order to make yourself more at peace doesn’t work. Waiting for the people around you to change before you can be happy only limits and diminishes your own power and influence. There is only one way to see change in the people around you, and that is to change yourself. So let’s talk about how this would specifically be applied. Let’s say you feel your problem is that your wife doesn’t clean up the house and get the laundry done or prepare meals so you feel that this stresses out you and your children. If only she would do what she’s promised to do time and time again, the house would run smoother, you’d come home to a clean house with a prepared meal. Your kids would be happy and structured and the problems and arguments wouldn’t be so intense between you and your wife. Problem #1 with this scenario is that you’ve put the power of change in someone else’s hands. So if your wife doesn’t change, you are screwed? What are you suppose to do? Be superman, go to work all day, come home clean, cook, take care of the kids and pick up her slack building resentment day after day? No. As you might see, that doesn’t work either.
What does then?
Focus on yourself. Ask yourself how you are reacting to the situation. Pay close attention to your emotions because we are going to label them and manage them. I know you think you can’t control it because of the messy house you are walking into, but you can. Changing your own negative internal response changes the environment and over time, changes the people in your environment.
Once you’ve identified your internal emotions toward this situation, specifically label them. Don’t direct it toward your wife. Just label it. I feel depressed in this environment. I feel angry in this environment. What is it? Then spend time thinking about that specific feeling inside of you and challenge yourself to find out when in your life you’ve also felt this exact same way. Could be your childhood in situations at home growing up as a young child. Could be as a teenager. Could be with a grandparent or past significant relationship. Could very well be more than one situation that comes to mind.
Start to understand that feeling comes from inside of you and your history. You have power over that negative feeling – whether it remains inside of you or not. Understand what triggers you to feel that and know how to identify it so you can have more power over it than it does over you.
I’m guessing you might be asking something like, “well, what about my wife, how does that change her?”
I understand your frustration, but please refer back to the beginning of this blog. You can’t change other people. The more you focus on changing someone else’s behavior, the less likely you will ever change anything in your situation. Change yourself, focus on being the healthiest person you can be both internally and externally and you will create change in your environment.