So much of our effort in our social life is spent trying to get people to change. It’s the reason we spend hours talking and reasoning and arguing and fighting. It’s the reason we manipulate. It’s the reason we bargain. It’s the reason we beg. It’s the reason we shame them. It’s the reason we shower them with information. It’s the reason we give incentives. It’s the reason we impose consequences. Despite all of this effort, we often find ourselves powerless to getting them to change. Why is this? Because a person will not change unless they want to. And this, is one of the hardest things to accept. In today’s video, this is what we will be unpacking.
First thing’s first, in today’s modern world, it is considered both moral and evolved to let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. To just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And to stop trying to change them and instead, just change yourself. It’s got a live and let live vibe to it. It’s got to be said that this mentality and this advice is both poor and profoundly privileged. This is a mentality that unravels the minute that someone goes against someone else’s best interests badly enough. It is dependent on being able to not be affected by other people, which is not the reality of the world that we live in. Basically, things have to be going pretty good for you to think that this actually works. For example, let’s say that you have a person in your life who is locked into a rescuer pattern in relationships. They keep finding partners who are dysfunctional and who use them because it is their way to externalize the rescue that they, themselves want and it is their way to try to guarantee that someone will stay with them. Someone could reasonably tell you “Look… You’re never going to change them. Let them be exactly as they are and accept them as they are. They will only change this when they are ready.” And this advice might actually work out because letting the person just be how they are, has a relatively minimal effect on you personally. But what if you find out that a person is sexually abusing children? Does it work if I come to you and say “Let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. Just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And to stop trying to change them and instead, just change yourself”?
Or what if a person takes over your government and decides that all people of your race or religion are not wanted in the country? “Let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. Just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And stop trying to change them and instead, just change yourself”? Does it work now?
Even if we scale this down a tiny bit and look at a woman who is with a husband who is completely unavailable emotionally. Accepting that he is emotionally unavailable and that you can do nothing to change that, means swallowing that you will be emotionally starved in this relationship for the rest of your life. It means facing starvation or divorce and what if she has children? What will it do to them? It means facing bad financial realities, what is she going to do with limited capacity to earn and childcare on top of that? Let’s go up to her and say “your problem is that you’ve got to let people be exactly as they are and accept them exactly as they are. Just realize that people will change whenever they are ready. And stop trying to change him and instead, just change yourself”? Does that sound good now? You know that the answer is no. It doesn’t matter if the reality is that we cannot control a situation by getting the other person to change, we live in a world where we can and do seriously affect each other. The live and let live philosophy falls apart when the reality is that we live in an interdependent web in an approximately closed system called Earth. The idea that you can just “do your own thing” and other people can just “do their own thing” is just completely out of reality.
Why is this important to see? Because most people who are desperately trying to get someone to change, are doing so because there are actually serious implications for them if someone doesn’t change. Fear and pain and consequences that they are desperate to not experience. And when we come at them like they just need to get more accepting and allowing of others, rather than trying to change them, we are only proving that we don’t see the serious implications they are facing in the event that the person they are trying to change doesn’t choose to change. And this is the real reason why it is so hard to accept that people won’t change unless they want to.
It is with this awareness of the very real implications that we must accept that no person changes unless they want to. That you can’t make someone change. You can inspire them to change. You an influence them to change. You can threaten them or impose consequences on them, which puts pressure on them to change. You can educate them towards change. You can support them in them making a change. But you can’t change them. And a person only changes if they want to. So, a truth you need to swallow is that all you can do is to try to get a person to want to change.
Desire is a far more powerful force in this world than most people have any respect for. A person has to have a realization that they need to change because changing is in their own best interests. And this realization is the foundation of the desire to change. There are all kinds of reasons why a person doesn’t change. If you’d like to become aware of the main reasons, I highly suggest that you watch my video titled: The Real Reason Why People Don’t Change. When we accept that no person changes unless they want to, it brings us face to face with what our powerlessness actually is. We don’t know how to get them to want to. Perhaps instead, we will find ourselves up against the reality of the incentive(s) they have to make no change.
But why is it so important to accept that a person won’t change unless they want to?
- If someone isn’t putting energy and effort into making a change, we can see what the real issue is. The real issue is, they don’t want to change.
- We can focus on the real task at hand… trying to spark their own desire to change. This implies showing someone why it is in their best interests to make the change. This also implies troubleshooting the incentives they have to not change.
- Sometimes when we accept that someone will not change, because they don’t want to, we stop wasting our time and energy trying to get something that is unworkable to be workable. We start to accept that all of our effort to try to change them is an attempt to avoid the reality that we are actually in, the one we couldn’t actually avoid. We suddenly see the choice we are actually up against. It forces us to look at the window that is closed and look for the window that is open. We can then see where we need to put our attention, time, energy and resources instead. You can think of this like stopping the pattern of being the moth that is flying up against a window until it dies of exhaustion. As the saying goes, don’t keep beating on the wall hoping it will turn into a door. And yes, sometimes accepting that a person will not change because they don’t want to and we cannot get them to want to, puts us in the position to have to make terrible choices. Terrifying choices with very real implications.
For a person to change and for that change to last, they must feel that the change is theirs. They must own it. They must choose it. They must feel It was a change that they realized was in their best interests to make and therefore it was a change that they wanted. The faster you accept this, the more effective you will be at inspiring others to want to change and the more effective you will be at closing the gap between where you currently are and what you want.
