The Change of Others

I cannot change people.

Oh, I know.  This should not be a news flash to anyone, even myself.  Someone could (and probably has) made a living of writing a number of self-help books around this entire subject:  titles such as "You Can't Change Anyone But You" and "Hoping To Change Someone Else?  Hope Again." litter used books stores under the appropriate sections.

But there is always this lingering hope, perhaps even a forlorn one, that if I simply perform the right series of events I will find the hidden combination which I seek.

Admitting - really admitting - that you cannot change people is actually a rather large step.  It is surrendering the concept that you have a certain kind of power.  It is conceding that people are really independent beings from yourself and not simply extensions of your own will.  It is admitting that you have much less power than you liked to think you had.

Can people change their behavior?  Of course.  Can you even be a part in that behavior change?  Again, of course - but by first surrendering the concept that you can make them do anything.

People will only change as a response to changes in you.  You can possibly still be the casual agent you think you should be - but in a much less direct way than you think possible.

This thought is not nearly as exciting, of course.  This moves the actual work of the change to a much different purview:  yourself.  And change - true change - is never very easy.

But I suspect there is a hidden outcome to this which is not readily visible from where we often sit.

I believe (although I have little to back this up in my own experience) that the very process of change in ourselves will modify the change we thought we wanted in others.  By the time we have changed to a new way of behavior what we may discover is that the very thing that we thought was so important to us - this person's approval, that person's buy in, the other person's interest  - is much less critical to us than we first thought it to be.  Or, even if the change we wanted comes, we can view it through a very different lens than we were first using.

But it all has to begin with that very simple, very humbling admission:  I can change no-one.

Except myself.