MANUAL TROUBLE

Wouldn't it be great if people came with an instruction manual?  A guide of shoulds and shouldn'ts, do's and don'ts?  Then everyone would act properly and we would all be happy, right?

A manual is an instruction guide we have for someone in our lives about how we want them to behave so we can feel good and be happy.  In essence, we want to control them so we can feel better.

For example, my husband should mow the lawn, my kids should do their chores without complaining, my boss should tell me he appreciates the work I do, and so on.  When those things don't happen, I might feel upset, unappreciated, and unhappy.

When we use a manual, we are handing the power of how we feel to someone else...the person we are trying to control.  It never works.  Do you like how it feels when someone is trying to control you, or they set unrealistic expectations that you can never meet?

Most often, the people in our lives don't even know what's in our manual for them, nor would they want to comply if they did, so we set ourselves up for consistently being disappointed and frustrated.

What if we just dropped the manual altogether?  What if we just loved people exactly as they are and let them be however they want to be?

The truth is, each of us is responsible for meeting our own needs.  That's our own job!  All the power to feel happy lies within you.  It can't depend on someone else's behavior.

So lets chuck out our manuals once and for all...allowing for other people to just be themselves and choose to love them no matter what!