Because I live in a large metropolitan area, I spend a lot of time driving. I’m usually working in a different company every day, often fifty to a hundred miles from my home. That means there will be traffic both directions. You can’t drive in Southern California without experiencing traffic.
When we first moved here from Phoenix, someone advised, “Don’t let the traffic get to you.” I thought I understood about traffic until the first day I had to drive into downtown Los Angeles. When the freeway was at a standstill, I assumed there must be a terrible accident somewhere ahead. But then I realized there was no accident; it was just a normal rush hour.
So I had two options. One would be what a lot of drivers do, which is to get angry and frustrated. They pound the steering wheel, drive recklessly, and yell at other drivers around them. Their emotions are being managed by something they can’t control: the traffic.
I realized that the first option (getting upset at the traffic) was futile. That left me with the second option: changing my own response to the traffic.
In the morning, I’ve learned to leave extra early before the worst congestion hits, then relax at a coffee shop near my destination. In the afternoon, I can’t avoid the traffic. But I plan alternate routes and listen to traffic reports, and I also have relaxing music or audio books to listen to while driving. I can’t change the traffic, but I can protect my emotions from being hijacked by that traffic.
It’s important to know what we can control and what we can’t. When we confuse the two, we set ourselves up for frustration.
For instance, I can choose the color of the car I purchase, but I can’t control if someone else likes it or not. I can control the choices I make in raising my kids, but I can’t control the choices they make as they move toward adulthood.
When we see people we care about making bad choices, we want to fix them so they’ll make good choices. But what happens when they don’t?
It’s unhealthy to be at the mercy of what someone does or doesn’t do. We can’t control the choices and attitudes of others. The only thing we really have control over is our own choices and attitudes. When we take responsibility for our own choices, we gain greater influence in other people’s lives. When we focus on things we can’t do anything about, we lose influence with others. We give away our joy and our sense of self to their weaknesses.
One city I visit fairly often is about sixty miles from my home. I usually drive there early in the morning to beat traffic, then hang out at the local coffeehouse until it’s time to go to my seminar location.
At this particular coffee spot, there is a small group of men who meet daily on the patio. Ranging in age from their midsixties and up, they drink their coffee and share opinions about what’s going on in the world and what needs to happen to solve each situation. They talk about war, politics, the economy, and things happening around the world. I’ve seen them there over a number of years, and people sit on the patio just to be entertained by their strong opinions.
I don’t know what these men do the rest of the day, but it seems like they’ve gotten really good at putting significant emotional energy into things they can’t do anything about—which means they’re not putting that energy into things they can actually change. I’ve often wondered what they might accomplish if they quit talking and focused on making a difference. It wouldn’t have to be something world-changing, just taking action on something where they can have influence. When people do that, their influence begins to grow over time.
Can People Really Change?
Is change actually possible? The simple answer is yes—people can change. No matter how long they’ve been a certain way, there is always hope. People can grow and change as the currents of life take them in new directions. We don’t want to throw up our arms and say, “It’s hopeless. They’ll never change.” We might be the catalyst in that person’s life, influencing them to become more than they currently are.
The bigger question is, “Will they change?” There’s no simple answer for that one, because we don’t know what choices they might make in the future. There is always hope, but there are never guarantees. If we’re going to avoid becoming victims of other people’s craziness, it’s critical to operate from a dual perspective: hope and realism. Without hope, maintaining the relationship seems futile. Without realism, we set ourselves up for the probability of disappointment. Without balancing the two views, we lose our ability to make choices that are healthy.
Yes, people can change. People might change. But it’s their choice; only they can do the changing. We can’t take responsibility for their choices. When we do, we feel the frustration that comes when other people don’t cooperate with our plans, and we end up yelling at the toaster oven.
The option isn’t just to escape the relationship, though that might be appropriate in some situations. Too often people run away to escape the pressure but never address the issues that caused the pain in the first place. Years later, they still carry those unresolved issues with them and are still being eaten alive by bitterness.
Reasoning with the Unreasonable
When our minds tell us one thing but our emotions tell us something else, which do we believe? Unless we challenge our emotions, they always trump logic.
I experienced this recently on a short business trip. The flight was only an hour, and we were about five minutes from landing when we hit the rough air. The turbulence wasn’t too bad, and it had been a fairly smooth flight until then. The man across the aisle was trying to read but was obviously uncomfortable. With each bump, one hand would grip the armrest while the other crumpled the magazine he was holding. I could see him suck in his breath and hold it, then try to distract himself by reading.
Earlier that day, I heard a news item about air safety. It described the statistical chances of dying in a commercial plane crash versus dying in a car accident. Over fifty years, your chances of dying in a car accident are about one in one hundred. Your chances of dying in a plane crash are about one in 10.5 million.
I could have leaned across the aisle and tried to convince my fellow passenger that he was statistically safe and had a much greater chance of an accident while driving home from the airport after we landed. I could have shown him graphs and data to demonstrate the truth of my words. But he would still have been gripping the armrests whenever the plane shifted.
When people experience strong emotion, they can’t hear logic. Have you ever tried reasoning with a frustrated spouse or an angry teenager? How did it go?
In Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath use the analogy of riding an elephant.[2] The rider represents logic, making analytical decisions about where he wants to go. His conclusions make sense and he has the data to back them up. But the elephant represents emotions. The rider might be able to yank on the reins and move the elephant by logic for a while, but he soon becomes tired from the effort. Then the elephant simply goes wherever it wants.
Most of the time, the elephant trumps the rider—emotions trump logic. For us, the only time the rider wins is when we have a crystal clear picture of who we want to be and make conscious, deliberate choices in that direction.
Who’s in Control?
Look over the following list of things we typically find stressful. For each one, decide if you can control it or not:
We could argue that some of these—for instance, “who we spend time with” or “job security”—could fit in both categories. It’s true that our work situation might seem to dictate those issues, or we could gain new skills that would enable us to make changes in those areas. But for the most part, the odd-numbered items are things we can control, while the even-numbered ones are out of our control.
Have you ever yelled at the toaster oven because it was taking so long, or at the computer because it took five seconds for a website to load instead of two?
Life is filled with examples of things we can and can’t control. Most people have trouble separating the two, and it causes stress. Our expectations are unrealistic when we try to change the unchangeable.
The Solution
What can we control? Ourselves. What can we not control? Everything else.
Our frustration comes from trying to control people and circumstances that are out of our realm of control. The key to surviving crazy people is to determine what we have control over and put our energy there. We can’t change others, but we influence them when we change ourselves.
I learned this lesson as a teenager in Phoenix. Like any sixteen-year-old, I was proud of having my license and considered myself to be a pretty good driver. Normally, I tend to be fairly laid-back. But when I started driving, I found a side of my personality I had never seen before.
It started the first time someone cut me off in traffic. With a line of cars in front of me and no one behind me, a car rolled into the lane ahead of me and drove about ten miles per hour, causing me to jam on my brakes to avoid hitting him. “He’s crazy,” I thought, and I was angry with him. So like any mature driver, I immediately started tailgating him. I figured he would notice what I was doing and feel remorse for cutting me off.
It didn’t happen.
I encountered a lot of crazy drivers over the next few weeks, and I became more and more upset when it happened. I actually got to a place where I was angry before I started the car. I was thinking, “I wonder who it will be today?”
One day, after a similar incident, I was fuming at another driver and tailgated him as punishment. I pulled up next to him at a signal and glared at him. But he didn’t notice that I was glaring, which made me even angrier. My horn didn’t work, so I couldn’t get his attention. I got even angrier, since I was trying to punish him and he didn’t know it was happening.
Then I realized what was happening. He was fine. I was fuming. The only person I was punishing was . . . myself. I had allowed my emotions to be controlled by the exact person I didn’t want controlling them. I had become his victim and he didn’t even know it.
Have you ever been angry with someone and couldn’t let it go? Maybe you were hurt in a relationship years ago and haven’t seen the person since. But you’re still living as a victim of that person’s behavior.
Holding anger toward someone in that way is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.
We need to become different people in our responses to others, building character traits that allow us to handle their craziness without becoming victims. When we become different, people will respond to us differently. But most important, we’ll have the strength of character and the boundaries that allow us to be emotionally healthy, no matter what others do.
“I Hear You’re Expecting . . .”
A lot of the discomfort in relationships comes from our own expectations. When we decide what a person is like during our first contact with them, we assume it’s accurate. We form those first impressions quickly, and we believe them to be true.
The problem is that we’re evaluating the person from a one-sided perspective. We don’t know their perspective, so we assume it’s the same as ours. It’s like we’re looking at things through our own lenses—our background, culture, education, experience, language. But the other person is doing the same thing, assuming that we’re thinking the same way they are. So we both end up with unrealistic expectations of what the relationship will be like.
Have you ever believed something about someone and then gained new information that changed your belief?
If I have to jam on my brakes when someone cuts in front of me without signaling on the freeway, my first thought is that they are incompetent, rude, and aggressive. I might feel strong emotion and make all kinds of assumptions about their character and competence.
But I’ve done the same thing to other people accidently when they’re in my blind spot. I might think I was looking carefully, but I don’t realize I’ve cut them off until I hear their horn as I merge dangerously in front of them. I didn’t do it maliciously, and I’m not being aggressive. But seeing their response in my rearview mirror tells me they don’t know what really happened. They’re making the same assumptions about me that I often do about others.
We interpret the actions of others as malicious when they might be totally innocent. And how we interpret their actions is what upsets us.
Communication: The Key to Accurate Understanding
I say, “It’s going to be hot today.” I grew up in Phoenix, so “hot” means a dry 117 degrees. But if you’re from Atlanta or Anchorage, “hot” takes on an entirely different meaning.
I’m looking through my lenses in a conversation. I know what I’m thinking (117 degrees), and I listen to you through those lenses, assuming that we’re on the same page. I’m listening to you, but it’s from my point of view.
Here’s the problem: We’re both doing the same thing.
If both of us are assuming that we understand what the other person means with their words, we’re both going to be wrong. We see our side clearly and wonder, “It’s so obvious—why don’t they get it?”
The solution is to look through each other’s lenses. I need to realize that your perspective is different than mine and try to understand how you see things. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with you; it just means I want to see what you see. If we each take the time to understand where the other is coming from, we lay a foundation for an effective relationship.
It’s even worse when there’s a third person involved. If I talk to someone about you behind your back, I’m adding their perspective to my own, reinforcing my assumptions about your motives. Without talking to you and trying to understand your view, we move ever further away from realistic connection.
Proverbs for Perspective
“But that sounds impossible,” you say. “If I’ve spent my whole life looking through my own lenses, and the other person does the same thing, how can we learn to do it differently?”
Good question. Fortunately, there’s a good answer. The Bible isn’t just a book about religion; it’s a book about relationships, and it’s filled with practical suggestions for making our own relationships work. Here are some examples:
If we want to learn how to get the best use out of our new car, we read the manual provided by the manufacturer. If we want to have effective relationships, we glean insights from reading the instruction manual from the One who designed relationships. These principles are powerful in all of our relationships, including the crazy ones.
That doesn’t mean that if we do the right things and follow these principles then other people will automatically get their act together. We can’t control how they respond, but we can control how we respond to them. Principles like these can be the foundation on which we base every relationship, no matter what the other person does.
Notice that all of the above principles give instruction to us, not to the other person. It’s all about what we do in relationships, no matter what others do. That means we develop ways of relating that we use every time, knowing that we might or might not get the response we’re looking for.
Lifeguards are a good illustration of this. They’re trained in the most effective techniques for saving lives, and they use those techniques consistently. They know that they won’t save 100 percent of the people they go after, but it doesn’t stop them from trying.
So in a sense, it’s all about us. We are responsible for our choices, actions, and attitudes, and we can actually change those. That’s not true about other people. We can’t force them to do or feel anything.
What can we do, then, in the lives of others? We can use the most effective tool we have for getting other people to change: influence.