When someone who have a somewhat intimate relationship with will not seem to change their toxic ways, it can be very frustrating. Whether it is a spouse, friend, coworker or family member, these situations can be very emotionally taxing. Oftentimes we look at other people and criticize them for what THEY should be doing and how THEY are making our lives worse. This way of thinking is normal but can be a very slippery slope.
You may have heard someone say “when you can’t change someone, change yourself.” This can be very triggering to hear. You may say things like:
- You don’t know what they’ve done to me!
- You don’t understand how hard it is to do my job when they won’t cooperate!
- You don’t know how frustrating it is to see the trash filled to the brim when I asked my husband a hundred times to take it out and he ALWAYS forgets!
While these statements are true and feeling these emotions are undoubtedly extremely frustrating, talking about the problem is only going to make it manifest into something larger and make you more frustrated, anxious and stressed.
If you are not able to remove this person from your life, a change needs to happen and if it is not happening within them, it needs to happen within you. This is not about toxic positivity. It is about taking control of your life and being a victor, not a victim, as one of my favs Joel Osteen always says.
You attract more of what your dominant thoughts are. Most people think about what they don’t want and wonder why it shows up over and over again. So how do you change what is going on within you in order to manifest a new experience?
1. Recognize Everyone Has Free Will
Once you understand this, it is easier to come up with solutions. We are all born with free will. You cannot wish or manifest someone else to do something they are not willing to do themselves. That’s why when you see people post advice on how to “manifest a specific person to love you” that is quite literally impossible. No matter how bad you want to, you cannot make another person act in a way that you desire. Even if you desire for someone to break free of self sabotaging behaviors like addictions and making strings of horrible life-altering decisions, you unfortunately cannot make someone change. You can only change yourself. How frustrating would it be if everyone could just manipulate your life because they think something is best for you? If that was the case, a lot of people wouldn’t be living in their own truth and power, they would be at the mercy of whoever wanted to play their puppet master.
2. Get Real With Yourself
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
– Albert Einstein
Complaining to the person you wish would change or to other people about how this person is disrupting your life a million times clearly isn’t making the situation any better, so come to terms with that and realize that you have to be the one to start making some internal shifts. A lot of times people think that it’s easier to change others than it is to change ourselves. It’s also easier to blame others for our situation instead of ourselves. Recognize that you are not perfect either and you have your own work to do.
3. Focus On What You Can Change
Say for instance your husband keeps putting off taking the trash out and it absolutely infuriates you to see. Start doing it yourself, and without opening the trash bag aggressively (you’ve all seen those reels on IG). Get it off your list of things to get done and take control of the situation. If your husband keeps seeing his wife taking out the trash and doing so happily, it might change the way he feels about that chore as well. He could be associating taking out the trash with getting nagged which makes him not want to do it even more. You can change the energy around that situation by making little shifts in yourself and taking control. It might be hard to keep your cool at first, but keep practicing.
4. Take Out Your Journal & Take Inventory
Ask yourself who has been triggering me a lot lately? What situations that they are involved in are triggering you? How can you change yourself to improve these situations?
For example, I was getting frustrated with my husband because I wanted to get some things done around the house while I was 8 months pregnant and he seemed to be putting them off. I was so over them not getting done and feeling the resentment bubbling that I started doing the tasks myself. It felt SO good to get those things done and it totally shifted the energy in our home. It was crazy how fast it worked.
If you give this a try, let me know the results you’ve found I would love to hear about them!
