You are not the reference point.
You may be familiar with the quote “Stop expecting you from other people.”
I can't figure out who exactly it originated from, but it’s a great one.
There’s an additional important component to this idea that you have to wrap your head around if you want to truly reduce the negative emotion and brain drama you have around the way other people show up.
Stop expecting other people to do what you would do in any given situation AND…
Stop assessing the way they are showing by your own standards for how they should show up. By your standard of what is right, normal, or appropriate.
Master certified coach Kara Loewentheil says it beautifully:
We think we are the normal ones. And that whatever we would think of or come up with is the normal thing. And so we’re willing to contemplate the idea that someone might possibly be different from us, and our idea of … being open to that is … allowing that to be … an acceptable deviation from the norm.
But that’s not the reframe that will blow your mind. The reframe that blows your mind happens when you realize that you’re not the standard. You’re not the reference point. Your point of view is not the main point of view from which you should just stretch your brain to see if you can imagine how someone else might deviate.
In fact, your point of view is inherently limited, and it doesn’t even account for or contemplate many, many other ways of thinking and feeling and doing that humans have.
If you stop expecting them to show up like you, but you still think their behavior is abnormal, you’re still going to have drama.
When you stop framing other people’s behavior as abnormal because it doesn’t align with what you would do or with what you would expect or how you want them to behave, it allows you to stop taking other people’s behavior so personally. It allows you to accept the behavior more easily without making it mean anything about you or them. It allows you to remove the drama around any situation.
To be clear, acceptance is not the same as indifference. Acceptance is not the same as intolerance.
Acceptance allows you to decide from a clean and calm place:
-how you want to think about them and their behavior
-how you want to feel in response
-what you want to do in response
-from a clean space, instead of being reactive
It doesn’t mean you like their behavior. Or condone it. Or tolerate having it in your life.
It just means you’ve accepted they are going to do what they do and you have no control over that.
You do have control over how you react and what you are willing to tolerate.
A ❤️note to you: If there are people in your life who do not show up the way you want, and you struggle with that, that’s completely normal. But you can reduce the struggle. I can help. Send me an email or sign up for a free call with me at jenndealcoaching.as.me/consult.
