So, on one of my message boards yesterday a girl posted about how to get her husband on board with her New Year's resolution, as she was already frustrated with him for not helping her.
My response to her was that she cannot reasonably expect him to be on board with a decision that she made for herself, and has no reasonable expectation for him to help her out, since it was not his decision. And that she has no reason to be frustrated with him, since he's not the one who decided to make a change.
I think we all do this from time to time. We make a decision for ourselves, but maybe it affects another loved one - a spouse, a family member, even a close friend or a coworker.
And when we find out that they're not necessarily on board with our decision, we get upset with them. But why? They didn't decide to make a change, we did.
And when they refuse to put their time & energy toward helping us work toward our new goal, we get frustrated with them. But why? It wasn't their goal, it was our goal.
And when maybe they get pulled into this new activity, most likely by their proximity to us, and they're not too happy with the activity or its outcome, we're upset that they're not happy with it. Why? Why should they be happy with something that the didn't decide? With an activity that they never agreed to participate in?
All we can do is to try to make sure that our goals & decisions are not only in our best interests, but those around us. Which is a good way to live anyway.
And then we can act on our decisions, work towards our goals, and do the best we can. We can hope for help from others, but we should have no real expectation of it. We can hope for their support, but if it doesn't come, that shouldn't deter us. We certainly can hope that our loved ones will be happy with our decisions, but if they're not... as long as we're sure we tried to work our actions toward the "greater good", then... their happiness is their decision, not ours.
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