regarding relationship

No matter how intensely intertwined you find yourself with another person, your relationship is affected many times more by the thoughts that are moving around in your own mind than by the other person who is moving around in your house or in your life experience.


That is why it is so interesting to us to see people working so hard at controlling one another while working very little on controlling their own thoughts and perceptions -- especially since they have no real control over another and they do have complete control of their own thoughts and perceptions.

~ Abraham-Hicks


I gotta be honest ... for me, sometimes it just seems so much easier to try to control someone else than to control my own thoughts and perceptions. Historically, I think I've had better luck doing it that way.

At least sometimes people appear to respond to my cool reasoning, passionate point-making, or beseeching requests. Unfortunately, my own thoughts and perceptions seem immune to such tactics; often maintaining their original trajectory until I go to sleep or distract them in some other way.

Besides, it's kinda rewarding to successfully influence people. When I actually do manage to get someone else to do what I want, I usually feel pretty satisfied for a while. But it's sort of a false and fragile sense of gratification, built like a house of cards. One little breeze of self-determination on the part of the other person; one hint of an idea that maybe they'd prefer to do something other than what I want, and my conditional contentment comes crashing down.

So I'm working on this. When I feel unhappy, I try to remember to take a look at myself first, to see what I am thinking or perceiving that could be creating my discomfort.

And lots of times, instead of doing that, I just try to get the other guy to change whatever he or she is doing. I only remember to take a look inside myself after that initiative is not successful.

Oh well. I'm okay with it. Constructing a strong foundation of internal mastery takes some time. No doubt there will be plenty of opportunities to try again.