Lesson 4: You Can Only Control You

My mother certainly didn’t write the serenity prayer, but she reminded me on many occasions of its worth.
May God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.
If it has not become clear already by reading my previous posts, I often came to mother to get her opinion on interpersonal problems I was having. In more recent years we often discussed my husband or my children, but throughout my life I talked to my mom about my relationship frustrations.
On many of those occasions, my mother would point out to me that the real problem was that I still believed I could change the people I love.
The truth is, I couldn’t and I can’t and I won’t ever be able to. The only person whose behavior I can control is me. This fact has the potential to make a person feel powerless, but in truth, it’s a pretty liberating epiphany to have. In every situation, I have the ability to control how I respond.
It’s crazy how often I approach a frustrating situation with the question how can I make this person stop behaving in this way that is driving me crazy? And while it would be incredibly satisfying to have the answer to that question, my mother wanted me to understand that getting someone else to make different choices isn’t a human superpower.
Sure, we can ask our spouses and our children and even our friends to please not do that thing you’re doing. Sometimes asking yields the desired result. Other times, it doesn’t. And what to do in the times that it doesn’t has always been a real challenge for me.
But, here’s where the power lies. I can’t make someone else make different choices. But I can make different ones myself. Sometimes these troubling behaviors are an indication that the relationship isn’t working for me. I can choose to walk away.
Sometimes, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, the behavior isn’t actually impacting me. I’m just allowing it to bother me. I can choose not to.
Sometimes, I’m hurt or angry, but the way I’m expressing it isn’t proving to be productive. I can do something different.
Ultimately, for me, the takeaway from this lesson is that people are who they are. We get to choose whether we want them in our lives, but if we do, then we have to take all of them. So when there’s something about them that isn’t working for us, it’s on us to figure out how to deal — not on them to change it.
Some things we can change. Some things we can’t. The wisdom is in knowing the difference.
