Instruction Manual
Wouldn’t it be great if the people in our lives came with instruction manuals?
I just bought a brand new stove and dishwasher and they both came with instruction manuals.
When I was a brand new mom my babies did not come with instruction manuals.
I do find it fascinating that even though people do not come with instruction manuals, and manuals don’t work on people… We still try to use our own unspoken internal manuals on them anyway.
For example, I have been married for 35 years, I have an instruction manual in my mind about how my husband should be, how he should behave, what he should and should not do. You know how it goes, my best friend, should text me back as soon as I text her Period, it’s in the friend Manuel in my mind that she should do that.
Why is it that our loved ones do not respond or cooperate with the internal manuals that we have for them? it’s quite unfair of us because most of the time we have not even shared with our friends or our spouses what it is exactly we would like them to do, we just assume that they know because we in our own mind are responding in the most logical way so of course they should know exactly what they should be doing to meet our needs and expectations! This is so not true my friend!
Here is why our manuals do not work.
Everyone has their own thoughts feelings needs and desires and we can’t control another’s person’s behavior with a manual, we can’t control another person’s behaviors, thoughts, feelings at all, ever. No matter how much we might like to.
it’s our work to begin letting go of the manuals that we have for ourselves and for others and begin focusing on our own thoughts and our own responses to help other people behave.
Other people get to decide how they behave, and we get to decide how we think about how they behave, we don’t have to be angry or upset with them we just have to manage our own thoughts.
As soon as we let people be who they are we can experience them for who they truly are, we get to experienced their perspective on things from a place of curiosity rather than a place of making their behavior mean something to us..or about us and we can respond with who we truly are.
I challenge you to start letting go of some of your manuals.
If you would like to continue this conversation about how we can do better on letting go of our expectations of other people feeling our needs and wants and desires please come join me on my Facebook page and we can continue this amazing work together.
https://www.facebook.com/jacquelin.finnicum.3
