Your Guide to Changing Other People

Welcome! You’ve been struggling with someone in your life haven’t you? Well, I’m here to tell you how to change them and have the life you’ve always wanted!

Step 1. Find a solid wall.

Step 2. Repeatedly bang your head against it.

THAT’S IT!

In all seriousness, you can’t change the people in your life. You can’t will them to be different. You cannot force them to change their behavior.

This does not mean that people are incapable of change.

Your best bet to creating change is to look at your relationship with them as a system. As we’ve spoken about in the past, in a system, every component impacts every other component. This means that to change the relationship, you can do something different or behave in a different way and that will invite those in that relationship with you to behave differently or do something different.

What kind of change can that look like? It can look like a number of things but some healthy options include:

-          Owning what your role in this system is. How are you upholding the current system? What are you contributing to this?

-          Setting new boundaries

-          Changing your response or engagement with triggering conversations or behaviors.

-          Having an honest conversation around what’s important to you and what your goals are

-          Making requests of your loved one- not demands or holding expectations that they’ll read your mind

-          Using collaborative language! If there’s something that needs to change in your relationship, that responsibility falls to both you.

-           Going to therapy with them- this will create a space for you guys to hash out what is at play in your relationship and create an opportunity to build something new

You all know by now that I’m a big fan of boundaries and teaching others how to treat you. You  cannot change others. This will not magically give you the behavior that you’re wanting. What any of these options WILL do is provide an opportunity for things to be different. You can always shift your own behavior to make space for a new response. There’s power in this. When you can shift yourself, you do not need to even wish for the power to change others.