Stop Blaming Others For How You Feel

It’s not your significant others job to make you happy. Say what? Yes, you heard me correctly - it’s never somebody else’s job to make you happy. We were never given a class about how to be an emotional adult, most of us are stuck in a state of emotional childhood, and even more of you may have no idea what I am talking about.

Most of you reading this consider yourselves adults. You may all look like adults and “act” like adults, but in actuality you are functioning as emotional children, therefore locking you in a state of blame. Emotional childhood is when grown adults have not matured past childhood in terms of managing their emotions. It is when we do not take responsibility for how we feel. We blame the ex-husband, our boss, the government, the economy, the weather, or our childhood for how we feel, how we act, and what our results are. Why on earth are we willing to give others such an enormous amount of power? The fact is, we are in complete control of what we think and how we act. Nobody “makes” us feel a certain way. We have thoughts about what these people or circumstances do, and those thoughts trigger our feelings. We often perpetuate this thinking when we make comments to children such as “you have to say sorry to Jessica because you hurt her feelings”, or “did that boy hurt your feelings when he said those mean words to you?”. We teach children that other people are responsible for how we feel and this pattern becomes ingrained to a point where we don’t even notice how disempowering it really is.

When we are functioning as emotional adults we take full ownership of our feelings. We take full responsibility for our pain and for our joy. We do not expect others to “make” us happy. By the way - if we can’t make ourselves happy why do we think someone else can accomplish that feat? As emotional adults we do not expect others to “make” us feel secure. We understand that we are the only ones who can hurt our own feelings based on the thoughts we choose. We are much more empowered acting from a state of emotional adulthood. Now don’t misunderstand this as when you act more like an emotional adult you stop caring for others. It’s not that at all. In fact, what happens is you realize you don’t have to control others in order for them to act a certain way, to make you happy. A relationship can blossom when two people come together, agree to meet their own needs first, meet in the middle, and truly enjoy their time together. Instead of two becoming one, and each losing half, two come together and act as a team. Everyone gets to be who they truly are, and live in a place of integrity.

This week I encourage you to take the next step in becoming more aware and managing your mind. Take time to notice if you blame others for how you feel. Take a moment to consider the thoughts you are having about what they do, or not do. Decide on purpose to be the one responsible for finding more #mindfulweighs to feeling joy as you create your amazing life.