Other People's Behavior

 Resilience means acknowledging and accepting that other people's behavior is about them and not us.  Let that sink in.  Let's say it again, shall we?  Other people's behavior is about them and not you.  Does this mean we're not accountable and responsible?  Of course not.  In fact, the more we're willing to be accountable for ourselves, the easier it gets to realize that other people need to be accountable for themselves as well.

But it's a hard thing to do.  It's so easy to fall into faulty thinking.  That person who didn't return my text, never really liked me anyway.  We could have hung out like we used to if my drama wasn't so overwhelming right now.  I must have done something terrible that I don't remember to that co-worker who seems to have it out for me.

No matter how well we know other people, we never know them completely.  Plus, we always see them through the lens of our own perceptions.  (I wrote an entire novel based on this premise!)  Every single person you meet and interact with (including you) has unconscious biases, expectations, agendas and inner work that has yet to be done.  

I understand this and yet I am not immune.  (Hence the blog post.  We best teach the thing we ourselves need to learn!)  I have two friends in particular right now who are nowhere to be found.  That's actually not totally true.  I could drive to either of their houses or workplaces and they would be there. They have not been abducted by aliens or moved to Paraguay to the best of my knowledge. It's more that they're not showing up in my life at the moment.  It's SO easy to think, "why don't they love me anymore?"  I sometimes want to send pitiful messages to them both asking what I've done wrong, apologizing profusely for any transgression, real or imagined in the past thirty years.

But the reality is that I don't think I've done anything wrong.  I don't say this in an arrogant way.  I try hard to accept responsibility when I have done something wrong.  I'm not trying to be dodgy.  There's nothing wrong with me.  But there's nothing wrong with my friends either.  Everybody has their own issues they need to tackle.  It's easy to blame someone for a problem in a relationship but relationships are complicated.  My issues feed into your issues.  Sometimes this is even the thing that attracts us to another person!

A couple of times, my brain has tried to revert to pity party mode.  I've been friends with both of these people for many years.  Why would they abandon me now, when my life is so challenging with a husband with dementia?  But I shut "pity party mode" down fast these days.  It's not constructive.  It's not realistic and I can't afford the emotional energy it costs me.  I acknowledge that I have some abandonment issues.  I am working on them.  That other's people's actions sometimes trigger these issues is unfortunate.  However, my friends are not trying to make me unhappy.  They're dealing with whatever they're dealing with, and it just happened to intersect poorly with my issues.

Happiness is an inside job, my friends.  The only person you can be 100% responsible for is you.  We can (and should) strive for a world where we treat other people with compassion, kindness and empathy but that needs to extend to ourselves too.  You'll be a lot stronger and more resilient if you stop blaming yourself whenever anything goes wrong in an interaction.  Responsibility is important but blame is useless.  

The bottom line is that other people's behavior is always about them.  You can't control it.  You can't change it.  Focus on accountability for your own behavior.  That's hard enough.