I know too many people who blame their unhappiness on other people! It's just so sad.
I am guilty of this because when another person who is in your life and is acting up, then it's very difficult to be in a place of happiness.
The saying is you can't change how other people act, but you can change your response to it, is a bunch of poo! That only works if the other person has no real meaning in your life.
Thoughts?
Alice, this is something I've thought about for a long time, because yes, absolutely, when someone is in our lives, yet they act up, it can cause us a lot of unhappiness.
And I've had someone like this in my life for a very long time now. For a while I blamed my unhappiness on this other person's behavior. Then one day it dawned on me that if this person was the one in charge of making sure I was happy, well, then I would never be happy.
I tell ya, that realization was a flippen' eye-opener. I had to really look at their behavior, and how much of it did I allow? Was I speaking up? Was I tolerating? Was there something I could change myself? Was there something I could ask them to change? I had to decide to change what I could - because YES, if there is something they are doing that CAN be changed, I am all for that! What could I change in myself? And, then I had to figure out what I just simply had to accept. And sometimes there's just stuff that has to be accepted.
If you watch the video that Connie shared, a lot of those things he suggests, I've done for quite a while now, and it really, really has made a difference.
Now is my life stress free? Absolutely not!! I cried for like two hours on Saturday because I was just so flippen' depressed. And sometimes that's what we have to do - honor the emotional pain that we may experience.
But Saturday did teach me something also, about something that I was tolerating that was emotionally painful. Once I had a good cry, it was clear, and - though my previous tendency would have been to wait for things to fall into place - to let someone else fix things - THIS time I took action myself, for myself. And I feel a HUGE relief!!
This has gotten really long, but in short (finally) yes Alice, I do believe that we can be in charge of our happiness.
I just discovered though that so often, when I was unhappy, it was because I thought making a change would upset the other person (and it often does!). So I'd keep quiet, becoming more, and more unhappy.
Anyway, that's my experience