People Can’t Drive Your Crazy If You Don’t Give Them the Keys by Mike Bechtle
People are Full of Drama – When we have relationships, they can be full of drama and can make us feel upset. But how do we decide if we stick to the relationship or leave it.
Everything is Emotional, Shocking, Personal – When we get upset it is because something happened that is emotions involved in the situation. If something is shocking, it can upset us as well. When conversations become personal, they can make us upset or feel threatened.
We Think We Can Control People – We think we can control others and fix their thoughts and decisions. But we can’t really change anything.
We Can Change the Situation – If we can’t change others, we always have the option to change circumstances. If people stay too long when we invite them others to our house. We can limit the time or change locations.
Are We Always Right? – We think we are always right and always think things for the right reasons, but we are blind to our own mistakes. Ensuring that we leave room in our thinking for the possibility we are wrong will help us get along with others.
I am an Angel; they are the Devil – We also think we have the best of intentions and others who disagree with us have bad intentions or listen to people with bad intentions.
Relationships are Important – In the end other people are important and we need connections to others. We must stick to them if we can.
We Don’t Have to be a Victim – Staying with relationships that have drama must not mean we are to be victims of other people or victims of our own emotions. We need to find a place where we can be in control and not taken advantage of yet still have others in our lives.
There is Hope – We have hope that with a few steps we can have both other people and control.
We Can Only Change Ourselves – In the end we can only change ourselves and our own actions.
We Can’t Make Others Change – Other people make their own decision. We can’t change them or their actions.
Everything is Viewed Through a Lens – We can’t tell when we are looking at others or our options through the filter of our own biases and bad decisions.
Be an Influencer – The best we can hope for is to be an influence to others. We can encourage people to get along or not fight with us. We can praise people when they act in a way that doesn’t. make us upset.
Expectations and Expectancy – Expectations get us in trouble because we can expect others to change or decide we are right. Expectancy instead allows us to hope for a better relationship with others without expectations.
Stop Acting on Autopilot with People – If we react automatically to others, we will have bad relations because we aren’t thinking about others and what they are thinking or if what they are saying has value. We just react without thinking about what our actions will do to others.
Family is Important – We need other people, and we need family. They are important and protecting those relationships is worth the work.
Challenge
Identify one relationship that could use a little attention and see, is it possible you can change the circumstance of how and where, and when to take the punch out of the situation? Write down that relationship and write down three things you could do that might mitigate some of the annoying drama that you have between you.
