"I" Not "You"

               Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use. - Earl Nightingale

                Today is about “I” and not “you." This is a central idea involving the mistakes people make with friends, family, and in business relationships. Sometimes it's hard to accept others decisions, views, or ways of dealing with things. From our perspective they are clearly going down a wrong path. What can we do? Well, the best answer ……leave them alone.


                “Leave them alone?”  Yeah, that’s right, leave them alone. The most you can do for anyone is to believe in them. Persuading someone into doing anything they don’t like or want to do will most likely be a failed attempt. Most people don’t like to hear that, they want to believe they have the answer, but it’s the truth. The best you can do is for someone you feel is going down the “wrong” path is to listen and understand. Remember, no matter how “right” or “wrong” you think something is, it’s still your opinion. Let them live their own lives, experience their own pains, learn their own lessons. People learn and understand through experience, not lecture. Once they learn that they’ve gained your trust, they will begin to respect you more. Greater respect will make them more likely to communicate. Only give them advice if they ask and share ideas starting with “I.” Use sentences like “this is what I think…” or “I feel….” or “In my opinion….”. Avoid projecting your views onto someone else.

                 The best way to get someone to understand your view is to first understand theirs.  Respect starts within. You cannot get respect from someone else. Only YOU can feel respected and only YOU can feel disrespected. Those are YOUR feelings that you bring out based on the assessment of the situation. There is no way you can blame another for the way you react. Truly and genuinely sit and REALLY get to know their deepest concerns, what hurts them, what troubles them and what they are looking for. Your own insecurities will go away and you begin to gain respect from the one you care for. The only way to get someone to listen to your advice and understand you is to set an example. Example, if you force a child to eat a certain food, he will resent you for it. When you’re not there, he won’t eat it. Controlling someone with fear, guilt, and/or threats is not sustainable. It will prove ineffective and result in negative effects for both parties mental and physical health. Believing, understanding and trusting someone, will gain a lot more trust and respect than attacking them and making them feel guilty about their decisions.

              Intelligence is gained by experiences. This is an empty definition, it explains nothing. Experience is extremely situation specific. You may have heard people say,“I went to this school so I know more” or “I am older than you so I know more”. These are blanket statements. Let’s say you’re a 80 -year-old tailor and you meet a 20-year-old cook. It won’t be wise to say you are more knowledgeable about cooking or for him to say he is more knowledgeable about tailoring. Another example, someone hasn’t drove, a car, but read about it in books. Technically, he isn’t knowledgeable in the subject, he is just knowledgeable in the “theory” of driving.

              Morals are opinions. Principles  are natural laws. Projecting one’s morals onto another is like someone trying to force you to be gay (or if you’re gay, to be straight). Now think about that a second. Everyone, no matter how identically they are, will always have unique experiences in life, which will shape their morals. These subtle experiences may shape a different paradigm for them. Trying to force someone to think or see what you’re seeing is like giving someone in New York a map of Colorado and telling them to navigate through the city. Unless they are in Colorado, that map is useless to them. Same here, you can’t give someone your life map (paradigm) and expect them to navigate with it. if they don’t share your experiences.

              You cannot project what you feel is right and wrong  onto a population. Saying “everyone knows this” and “I bet more people would agree that this is wrong” means absolutely nothing. At the end of the day, it is STILL your opinion. If someone likes wars and violence and you don’t like it, it’s incorrect to say “that person is evil.” Instead, “to me, that’s evil” or “I am mortified by his/her actions” would becorrect. Labeling them is an opinion. People dislike feeling confused so they like to think their way of life is “correct." Really, it's just a sign of insecurity.


               Trying to understand someone’s pain is very hard to do. You can think you know how someone feels, you can understand them, but you can never truly feel their pain. Even if you were in a similar situation before you cannot feel their pain. You were not feeling it at the same exact time, with the same exact experience, and the same exact situation.

                Mental pain is much more devastating than physical pain. Mental pain is long term. It carries into our other activities and can even lead to physical pain. If someone gets their finger cut off, you know it hurts, but can you truly know how much it hurts? Can you feel what they’re feeling? Even if you got your finger cut off in the past, can you really feel exactly what they’re feeling at the moment? Can you recall what it felt like for you and feel it all over again as they’re experiencing it? Of course you can’t. Which is why understanding someone is so hard to do. It’s easy to guess and speculate how certain things feel, but it’s all speculation. Sometimes the best course of action is to just let people be and let them know you’ll be there for them.

                  Everyone is entitled to their decisions……lets not be insecure and judge them based on our own morals and ideals. Live confident, set a good example, and let people be.