23
It’s Worth the Effort

It’s been said that you can watch a six-year-old and tell what they’re going to be like when they’re an adult. They’ll grow and mature over time, but their basic temperament has been established. If they’re on the quiet side at six, they’ll probably be reflective and deep in their relationships in their sixties. If they’re outgoing, they’ll be the one coordinating the neighborhood barbecue later in life. If they love order and detail, their car will always be waxed and everything in their home will be exactly in place.

That doesn’t always happen, but it’s usually the outcome. If we observe the uniqueness of our kids, we can capitalize on those characteristics as they grow. If we try to change them and force them to become something they’re not, we’re setting them (and us) up for frustration.

Aaron is concerned that his son seems introverted and wants to help him become more outgoing. So he tries to force him to respond to situations in more outgoing ways. He means well, but his son is uncomfortable in those situations and assumes something is wrong with him that needs to be fixed.

It’s appropriate to teach social skills, provided we follow the contours of a child’s basic wiring. An introvert will never become an extrovert and vice versa. Instead, they need to learn how to be the best introvert or extrovert they can be, utilizing their unique strengths and gifts.

My six-year-old granddaughter, Averie, spends the night at our house on a regular basis. Her routine is always the same: she walks in the door and heads straight back to her room where she unpacks her suitcase, lays out her clothes for the next day, arranges her toys in the order she wants to play with them, and makes sure everything is in order. That happens in the first two minutes. Getting everything organized frees her to come out and play, knowing that it’s all taken care of.

Some people might think she’s crazy, and her parents could try forcing her to lighten up for fear she’ll end up with compulsive behaviors. But that’s because they would be looking at her through their lenses and putting their expectations on her.

Don’t we do that with other people? We all have crazy people in our lives, and we’ve talked about how efficient they are at ruining our lives. We assume that they need to change. But even though we’re bugged by their behavior, freedom comes when we accept their basic wiring instead of trying to make them become like us.

The Source of Craziness

Ask any group of kindergarten kids, “How many of you are artists?” Every hand goes up. Pose the same question to eighth graders and you’ll see about one-third of the hands. Ask a group of adults, you’ll find one or two.

What happens between kindergarten and adulthood? Somebody changed the child’s lenses. Maybe she drew a picture and a well-meaning adult said, “Here, let me show you how to draw it better.” So she thinks, “I guess I’m not an artist after all. Only adults can draw.” Children don’t have the inner resources to question adults, so they form their value based on the opinions of others. Years later, they still believe those opinions.

Most people remember the title Grumpy Old Men, even if they never saw the movie. It’s a description we easily identify with because we’ve all known older people who seem to be bitter about where life has taken them. They’re set in their ways and angry about the past. As much as they need the affection of other people, their grumpiness drives others away.

We’ve made choices throughout our lives that determine who we are in the present. Sometimes early choices were made for us, such as abandonment or abuse. Whether good or bad, those choices determine if we’re viewing life through positive or negative lenses. If we think life is miserable, it probably has more to do with our lens than with reality.

With a negative lens, we’re usually suspicious. When someone does or says something, we’re always looking for their hidden intent. We assume they’re trying to mess up our lives on purpose.

That’s the bad news: those lenses determine how we see the world, which determines how we feel. Yes, there are people doing crazy things, and we feel like they’re ruining our lives. But another person can watch that same behavior and not take it personally.

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to live as victims. We can change our lenses and think differently. Our relationships can be different than they are. There is hope.

A New Lens for Relationships

It doesn’t matter how long our emotions have been managed by crazy people. We can choose to live differently. Maybe other people have messed up our lives. But if we continue to live at the mercy of others in the future, it’s our own fault. We have the ability to make different choices.

Sound unrealistic? The more deep-seated those patterns are, the bigger the task feels. But change is still possible. The perspective we’ve carried for years might need the objective view of a therapist or counselor trained in sorting through the rubble. As long as we’re willing to begin the journey, there is always hope.

Your local bookstore carries a lot of books with tips for surviving crazy relationships. But if we’re looking through negative, self-defeating lenses and don’t take ownership of our choices, the tips won’t work. It’s an inside out job; it has to start with us. If we want our relationships to change, we have to change.

That doesn’t mean rolling over and playing dead, saying the other person is right and we’re wrong. That’s not realistic. It means we look inward first and become the type of person we need to be, making sure we’re viewing things through the right lenses. From that foundation, we’ll have the inner strength to handle the crazy people in our lives.

Think of the benefits that come from having a healthy perspective on life:

• People will like us better. No one is attracted to a grumpy, negative person.
• We’ll like ourselves better. We’ll wake up each morning with a sense of anticipation, knowing that we can handle the craziness that will inevitably happen during the day.
• Our emotions will be more real. People will still push our buttons, but we’ll have the internal resources to handle it.
• We’ll have perspective. It will be easier to sort through everything that happens, determining what deserves our emotional energy and what we should let go.
• We won’t live as victims of other people and external circumstances. We’ll take back the reins of our lives that we’ve given to others.

Twelve Tips for Healthy Relationships

Let’s review some of the key concepts involved in setting groundwork for a new beginning:

1. Learn to separate a person’s crazy behavior from the rest of who they are. Everyone does things that might be considered crazy, including us. But that’s not all of who we are. We have good traits as well as bad, and we’re in process. It’s important to see others accurately if we’re going to deal with them effectively.
2. Recognize that change is always possible. No one is hopeless, and change is always possible. It’s true of us, and it’s true of crazy people.
3. Don’t take responsibility for other people’s choices. We can try to influence them, but we can’t do the hard work of change for them. It’s their job, and we do them a disservice when we try to rescue them and take over.
4. Don’t put expectations on other people. We can’t depend on what someone else might do, because they might do something different. Expectations can lead to disappointment.
5. Remember that there are no guarantees. No matter how much energy and commitment we put into another person, we can’t assume that there will be a happy ending. We can only make decisions about our own happiness and choices, regardless of what happens to the other person. Sure, we’ll feel the pain of their poor choices, but it won’t define us.
6. Realize that you can’t change the past, but you can change how you respond to it. The past is permanent. No matter how painful the results of our past choices, they are behind us. Once we accept the reality of those choices instead of wallowing in them, we become free to move into the future.
7. Believe that there is hope for the future. Change is always possible. We can look through new lenses that can lead to an entirely new future. It might involve other people changing, but it might not. We might be the only ones who change, but it will take us in new directions.
8. You don’t have to be a victim. Even if we have spent years being controlled by the choices of others, we can learn new ways to think that lead to personal victory—no matter what other people do.
9. Change takes time. Like the story of the tortoise and the hare, persistence is more powerful than a quick, massive effort at reform. Healing relationships can’t be rushed, and real results come from long-term commitment.
10. There is no reward without risk. Any time we try a different approach with our crazy relationships, we don’t know how it will turn out. But taking those risks is the only way to break through the barriers that have been in place for so long. The best mountaintop views only come to those who take the risk of climbing.
11. Preparation has great value. The crazier the relationship, the more important it is to plan ahead for each connection. If we think carefully about each conversation before it happens, we won’t be as easily manipulated.
12. Choose to respond instead of react. People do bad things, say words that hurt, and make accusations that devastate us. We’re human, so we will have emotional reactions to those events. The key is to pause, notice our reactions, and then choose how we will respond. That brief moment allows us to steer our emotions, channeling them into the healthiest response.

Getting Professional Help

The principles we’ve talked about in this book aren’t rocket science. They’re just common sense and have been shaped through my interactions with people and their issues over the past thirty-five years. Simply stated, the principles work because they’re based on truth, specifically God’s truth presented in the Bible.

The Bible isn’t a book about religion; it’s about relationship. It’s not a collection of dos and don’ts, but rather a practical guide for everyday living. There are a lot of books about relationships, but I haven’t found anything that provides as much realistic, practical advice as the Bible. Since God designed relationships, it makes sense to read the owner’s manual when something goes wrong.

That’s why there is always hope in relationships. No matter how crazy someone is, God never gives up on them. He cares deeply about them as well as us, and he is working around the clock to influence change in their lives. When we can’t take another step and feel hopeless, God promises to always be there. We probably qualify as crazy people in God’s eyes, but he doesn’t give up on us. Study how God relates to us and you’ll learn how to relate to others.

Pick up a Bible and read the book of Proverbs. Type out every principle you can find that talks about relationships and try them out. You’ll learn more about handling relationships from that than from any other source.

Choosing to Change

Jason and Jenny always heard that when you join a small group, someone in that group will be crazy. Those crazy people are the ones whose lives tend to be more high-maintenance, bringing drama to every group encounter. So Jason and Jenny were surprised when they formed a Bible study group with five other couples and no one was crazy. Then the realization hit: “Everybody in the group is normal—so that leaves us. We must be the crazy ones.”

“They’re everywhere!” you say. “I’m surrounded by crazy people!” It often feels like that, doesn’t it? When we feel that way, we try to figure out how to avoid them or change them. That might work for a little while, but not long-term.

To get long-term results, the place to start is with ourselves. We can begin a journey of healing for our craziest relationships. The other person might stay crazy, but we’ll have the resources to handle it without losing our minds.

It begins with the smallest step, not with trying to change everything. What would be one thing we could do this week that would start the process?

We have a choice. We can keep things the way they are, or we can start a journey to make things better. Maybe the other person changes; maybe we change. Maybe both of us change. There’s always hope if we make new choices. We don’t have to be victims.

People can’t drive us crazy if we don’t give them the keys.