Welcome back my friends to the 10 Minute Mind Shift Podcast, this is episode #12. Listen here on Apple. or Here on Spotify.
I really appreciate all the reviews and kind emails. Special shout out to my sister Cyndi and her posse of friends. Keep the love coming ladies.
Make sure that you listen through the outro to see how you could win $100.
Alright, let’s get after it.
Relationships have the ability to be an amazing, enriching, nurturing experience and…relationships can also be the center of so much irritation, frustration and pain.
Relationships are at the center of everything we think, do and feel.
The effect of negative interaction with someone has the ability to stay with us with us all day long. For example, you can be tooling along heading to work and someone cuts you off and all of a sudden…bad mood.
You collect yourself again only to be triggered by someone at work.
Maybe it’s your boss who seems to be watching the clock as you walk in and now you feel micromanaged.
Or maybe it’s someone who doesn’t even look up when you walk into the room and it makes you feel marginalized...
Could be your trigger is the one who walks into the room and literally sucks all of the air out of the room with her loud stories all about her 1st world problems.
By lunch you are starting to recover when the fast food girl triggers you.
On your way home you collect your thoughts again only to be triggered by something that your husband does or doesn’t do that frustrates you and by now you are ready to blow.
Whether we know it or not, we all have thoughts on how other people should show up in our lives, how they should act, how they should talk even what they should say, in order for us to NOT be triggered, frustrated, irritated…mad.
We have thoughts on how husbands and friends should be so that we feel loved, appreciated and respected. We even have thoughts on bosses and co-workers too.
Believing someone should be different than they are can feel like we’re looking out for them, just wanting them to be what we deem to be their best selves, but what you aren’t seeing is the pain you are inflicting on yourself in the process.
He should answer my email faster, she should be more professional, he should be more responsive, he should recognize my efforts, she shouldn’t be so loud and he is just plain unprofessional.
These kind of thoughts, are what I call a “MANUAL” and these kind of thoughts are one of the most destructive thoughts we can bring into a relationship, any relationship.
Having a manual for someone is Premeditated Resentment.
Here is why…because when they get it wrong and we find ourselves triggered, it starts out as minor frustration and irritation and then builds to anger and eventually resentment.
When that happens, it becomes difficult for us to show up as our highest and best self. Oh, I know you think you are doing a good job masking how frustrated you are, but I promise you…you are not…everyone knows.
As humans, we think that it is our human right to have reasonable expectations of people in our life and that they should behave in a way that is reasonable.
But what we think is reasonable and what other people think is reasonable is sometimes very different.
One of the first things that I think is really important to remember is that as an adult, we all have the ability and freedom to behave however we would like.
That includes you.
There is nothing you ever “have” to ever do and there is nothing that anyone else ever “has” to do ever for you.
Here is the truth, you can’t control another person…
Here is a mic drop moment…there’s nothing anyone else could ever possibly do to make you as happy as you want to be.
I know that last sentence might be hard to swallow but I really want you to think about it, give it equal air time in your brain.
This is some of the most powerful work that I have done in my life and it is the biggest reason why I feel compelled to share it with you.
When we are reliant on others to create our emotional outcomes…we will always be disappointed because that my friend is an inside job.
When we are born and as we are maturing into adults, we were reliant on our parents and the adults in our lives for nurturing and we very much looked to our parents for our emotional support.
That is emotional childhood.
One of the things we fail to learn as an adult is how to step into emotional adulthood and we fail to learn how to take responsibility for our emotions.
As a result…we abdicate responsibility to others.
To hubby, kids, boss, co-workers.
The reason that this is sooo important is that when we abdicate our emotional well-being to someone else, we are living at the effect of how they show up in order for us to be living our best life and showing up as our highest and best self.
When we abdicate our emotional well-being to someone else, we are living at the effect of life happening to you.
I love teaching people how to cause the effect in their lives. How to step into emotional adulthood.
Now, it is a natural, human thing to do, to have expectations or ideas about how people should be, so you aren’t broken and nothing has gone wrong here.
Anticipating how our life is going to be and what it will feel like is part of our hopes and dreams and the advantage we have of being human.
I remember when I got married for the first time…I had so many ideas for how I thought my husband should be and how I should always feel as a result of him always showing up that way.
Even when I landed my first real corporate job, I had ideas for how I thought my corporate boss would be and my corporate co-workers would be.
As long as everyone is my life showed up like I thought they should, my world was right but when they didn’t…I felt ripped off, jilted, disrespected, unappreciated, irritated, frustrated, annoyed…all at the effect for how someone else showed up in my life or failed to show up in my life.
Just like you have a manual for how your blender is supposed to operate, and if something isn’t working the way the manual says it should, then it’s broken and you need to get it fixed, we need to acknowledge that we have these manuals for other people.
You’re supposed to reply to my text messages. You’re supposed to want to talk to me when I call. You’re supposed to be happier to see me.
Didn’t you read the manual?
Something is wrong with this friend of mine, my boss, my co-worker, my husband… they need to fix it so I feel better.
So, people are not good at being who WE want them to be.
They’re only good at being themselves.
They’re not good at reading our minds and do you know what else they’re not good at? They’re not good at being us. They’re only good at being them.
I know this is disappointing, you guys. I’m with you.
- I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t think like I want them to.
- Why don’t they act like I want them to?
- Why do they not see the world I do?
- Why do they not behave the way I do and like I want them to?
Wait, I know why…it would be terrible if we just had a whole bunch of me’s running around. It would be boring and weird and not a good thing at all.
We want everyone to be them. We don’t want people to be us. When we want them to be more like us, and they aren’t… we suffer.
We punish ourselves with our manual. This is the most important thing I want you to hear in this podcast episode. The reason I want you to drop your manual isn’t for other people.
Listen…they’re going to keep being themselves anyway, no matter what. I want you to drop it for YOU!
I want you to be able to enjoy the people in your life and to enjoy your own life experience and to stop turning yourself into a miserable, crazy person trying to control everyone around you.
So, what I always recommend to my student is, first we have to identify that we have a manual.
We have to really identify and recognize that we are creating our own suffering with this picture and this story and this manual that we’ve created of how this person should be.
We feel justified in it, don’t get me wrong. I know you have a lot of good reasons for it, but it doesn’t matter.
When you recognize that you’re creating your suffering then the next step is we just put the manual down.
Our idea of what a husband should be, what a marriage should be, what a parent should be, what a friend should be, what a boss and co-worker should be…so we can be happy IS what is creating your frustration and that is what is leading ultimately to resentment.
Learning about the manual I had for my husband is what saved my marriage and kept me from one more divorce and it helped me grow in my career, deepened my relationship with friends and family.
When I was able to put down the manual and let them all just show up authentically them…
When I was able to manage my thoughts so that I was in control of my emotions and I was not at the effect of how others showed up…
- I was not triggered.
- They did not determine my mood, I did.
- No one determined how I showed up, I did.
I was able to step into emotional adulthood and here is the most beautiful part…
When you accept responsibility for how you feel, you lift 1000 pounds of weight from the relationship, and you create 30,000 square foot of space for the other person to show up.
When YOU show up in YOUR life like you would like THEM to show up, you flip the script and you change the plot forever.
Here is my parting thought…
Having an expectation is not what the issue is, the issue arises when we tie our emotional well-being and state of mind to them fulfilling the expectation.
It’s totally fine to request hubby take the trash out before it stinks, having the expectation is not where the pain bubbles up.
It’s what we make it mean when he doesn’t do it.
It’s how we show up in response to him forgetting or just deciding he doesn’t want to do that anymore.
You getting upset and making it mean something is what is causing your pain and suffering, not what hubby does or doesn’t do. Not what boss does or doesn’t do, not your co-workers not even the dry cleaning lady…oh the dry cleaning lady…but that’s another podcast for next time.
Alright my friends…I hope that you have the best week EVER!!!
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