With regards to friends or family members (or anyone else) violating your “ground-rules”, remember that what you resist tends to persist.  This seems to be especially true for others’ behaviors … Thus, any attempts to change another’s mind-set are destined for failure, and will actually encourage them to entrench those same choices in even more extreme expressions.

The only “solution” I have for such difficulties is radical Love.  Indeed, the unconditional Acceptance of others as people (regardless of your feelings related to their choices) is the only response that I have personally found to have any beneficial effect during such conflicts.

And this acceptance must be more than mental — it must be active!  It must be continually reinforced with deeds of active kindness.

Now I am not advocating that you condone others’ seemingly destructive behaviors.  I am encouraging you, however, to Love them unconditionally despite those behaviors and to make that Love known to them. Affirm that you Love them regardless.  Tell them, even though their choices are not the ones you would have them make, that you have every Faith in their ability to follow their own Path, and that you will be there to support them if they ever need someone to lean on …

Just as importantly, make sure they knows that, because you Love them, you will not actively support their self-destructive decisions — that they are more than welcome to live their lives as they choose, but that if choosing to live selfishly and self-destructively, they will not do so “under your roof” or with your affirmation thereof.

In essence, it is impossible for any of us to help anyone else by either persuading them or coercing them to change, and yet also we cannot help them by enabling their self-centered “mistakes”.  Be firm in your belief in others’ innate, internal, spiritual fortitude, and send their “smaller” ego-selves constant Love no matter what they chooses to do …

This is The Way of Love.

Filed under: simple Answers to tough Questions by Scaughdt