Start with yourself

There are plenty of times when we feel bothered by the other party in conversations, meetings, or interactions of any form, directly or indirectly. I see that every day at school. People don’t really know how to behave with each other. We constantly see flaws in others: they are selfish, arrogant, needy, angry, cold, weak, and so on. This usually happens without us realizing, considering the fact that it’s of course easier to see and judge the behavior of others, rather than ourselves.

We, then, spend a lot of time trying to change others, so we point these things out, meeting resistance or indifference. Why would people not take our advice?

The thing is, that we always draw a line between changing others and changing ourselves. We may know that our behavior could need a bit of improvement, too, but for now, it is easier to try to change, or as it’s usually called “help” others. Well, we think that if they are nicer, we’ll be nicer, if they are polite, we’ll be polite.

In this way, we miss a very important insight, which is actually not unknown to us: changing how you behave to others, may be the fastest way to change how they behave to you. It’s like a mirror. If we behave aggressively with someone, they will probably become aggressive in return. If someone is gentle, they become soft in return. We might quite angrily suggest that someone else calm down. Or we may bullyingly insist to a person that they try to be more empathetic. These are all very real scenarios, happening to us all the time. We have good intentions, but the implementation is yet rusty.

You know the saying:  “Be the change you want to see.” This has one great advantage: we can control ourselves while it’s remarkably hard to exert any sort of direct control over anyone else. Our disappointment with other people should be redirected to something we can actually command: ourselves. Seeing us behave in a good way, with certain virtues, has a remarkable ability to inspire others and to encourage them to imitate us. We should behave exactly how we would like others to.

And even if change doesn’t come immediately, we can at least be proud that we had the strength and courage to have started to become the change we want to see.

Pictures:

“In the Conservatory“ by Edouard Manet

“A Game of Croquet” by Edouard Manet