Articles

Accept People For Sweet Rewards
By Perry A~

Well, that’s a lesson learned! I can’t make vanilla pudding from chocolate cake ingredients. Don’t laugh just yet! Not until you look closely at yourself. Now, answer me honestly. Have you ever tried to change another person? Alter their ingredients just a little bit? If your answer is yes, then you have been messing in someone else’s kitchen, playing in their ingredients. Trying to change the recipe after it has been started will create a mess. It is like trying to make an apple pie with chocolate chip cookie dough. 

So, how did it work for you? Did you get them fixed or changed? Permanently? Hard to do, isn’t it? Though you may make some momentary gain, you are violating their space which leads to withholding and resentment resulting in tough cookies. You just can’t make a good apple pie with chocolate chip cookie ingredients. 

If you are a parent you have probably tried to change little Johnny or Susie more than once. It goes with Parenting 101. Actually, it is a fallacy of life. It is so easy to want to change people and make them like ourselves or even better. That’s the kicker, easy to want and hard to do. 

People don’t disappoint us. Our expectations of how they should be according to OUR rules and values are what disappoint us. Take YOUR labels and opinions about how they SHOULD be off, and what do you have? They are just being themselves given their own perceptions and values. Accept them where they are and leave them to their own creations. Take your self-righteous yardstick of perfection and burn it! Give them a break. If you really want them to change, let them be accountable for their own creations. Look the other way if it hurts. 

If what we are is not getting us what we want then it is up to us to change or stay stuck. We have all come with a unique set of ingredients. Until we choose to change our own ingredients, we are all we can be given our basic natural traits, value systems and life experiences.

When we can accept ourselves and others just as we are, we create a safe space to allow others to grow by reflecting for them, another way of being. Take off your "not good enough" glasses and look for their good. Look for positives and then praise those traits. Help them see how truly great they are and they will be just that. Trying to change people creates an energy stealing, resistant power struggle. Life become a battle of right vs. wrong, or my way vs. your way. Criticism and being judgmental only stimulates resistance. Being right with another person closes the door of willingness.

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