When They “Refuse to Change”

Today, I want to swing through with a brief reminder that growth requires willingness & consent. In other words, you can’t force, manipulate or trick other people into changing.

You can try to, but it’s highly unlikely to accomplish what you’re genuinely yearning for. Instead, wasting your energy on “changing someone” else will lead to resentment in one of two ways:

You resent them for not meeting your expectations to change.

They will resent you for trying to change them.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Because what we are really saying in our attempts to “change” another is that we have unmet needs and we feel disempowered. Underneath it all, are our personal needs which we’re trying to meet by forcing them to change. This is usually some combination of love, safety, belonging, and dignity

Not only that, but our desire to change others is also a map showing us the path to meet our needs and reconnect to empowerment.

These questions can help you find your way:

WHY do you want to change them? What are you hoping changing them will change for you? (hint: the answer to this question highlights your needs).

Let’s say you knew for a FACT that this person would never change. How would you go about meeting your own needs instead? (hint: the answer to this question is your path to empowerment).

Generally, when we get stuck trying to change others into people who can meet our needs in the present, it’s because we’re unconsciously replaying childhood dynamics with adults who struggled or refused to meet our core needs for love, safety, and belonging in the past. As children, we relied on those adults for our survival. We had no choice but to try and change them into people who could care for us, or change ourSelves into people we felt could be loved. But that dynamic no longer serves a role in our lives as wholesome, healing adults.

So, next time you catch yourself trying to change someone else, I invite you to pause and get curious…

What needs are you trying to meet?

Where might you be making another person the condition to meeting those needs?

What if the possibilities for meeting those needs were actually limitless?

One of the biggest ways we give away our power is by thinking the meeting of our needs is conditional upon a single person, situation, or thing going our way. Unless you are very sick, injured, or disabled… that’s rarely the case.

People wake up to their dysfunction when they feel safe, NOT when they feel forced.

We can influence others, but we can’t control them. & that is comfort enough to turn it all inward instead.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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