Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode three. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast for focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

You may have noticed that people are terrible at doing what they’re told. We all are very resistant to being bossed around.

In this episode, we’ll get into how we need to let other people be who they are. They aren’t going to change, not for us, not for anyone. We need to stop trying to change them because it’s futile. Our energy is better spent responding thoughtfully, rather than reacting emotionally or even explosively, in some cases. 

Maya Angelou said it best when she said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” 

I’d like to share four tips to stop trying to control people. 

Tip number one, let them be. We spend a lot of time asking people to be someone other than who they truly are. Generally, the reason why we want someone else to change the way they’re behaving is because of how we think we’ll feel because of their changed behavior. But it’s our thinking that causes our feelings, not their behavior. 

We think that we have reasonable expectations of people in our life and that they should behave in a way that is reasonable. But what we think is reasonable, and what other people think is reasonable, are often very different things. Adults have the ability and the freedom to behave however they would like. And that includes you. 

You get to show up exactly who you are, not pretending to be something that you’re not. You get to choose. And there’s nothing that you have to do. But unfortunately, there are consequences, but that’s a whole other discussion. So allow everyone to be who they are, and experience them for who they are, and stop creating rules for everyone. 

Whether we know it or not, most of us have expectations that we have created for the people in our lives about how they should behave and what we think they should do. Most of us aren’t even aware that these rule books exist, and yet we expect them to follow these rules, and we get upset when they don’t. It’s perfectly okay to have certain expectations of other people, as long as we acknowledge that we have them. It’s a sort of a manual, an instruction book, that we’ve written for somebody else to follow, so that we can feel good. But we get ourselves into big trouble when we start tying our emotional happiness to these rules or expectations. 

It may seem very justified to have expectations of other people, but it’s also damaging and frustrating for us. We hold a belief that if other people would just behave the way that we want them to behave, then we would be happy. I’m guilty of this. I’ve done it for years. 

Usually we don’t even realize that we’re doing this and we don’t tell them about our expectations. We just expect them to read our minds. We just want them to know or to figure it out for themselves. And we’re disappointed when they don’t get it right. We’re setting ourselves up for so much self-inflicted disappointment and hurt. We have these expectations yet we don’t even share them. And then we’re so mad when they don’t follow them. And then we use that as excuses for feeling bad when they’re not followed. 

Our wants and needs can get a little messy. Commonly, we’re told to communicate our needs to those we love, to make a list of all our needs and then tell those needs to this other person. And that person is supposed to try and meet our needs. And we find ourselves in a relationship with someone who expects us to fulfill their needs. That’s just a disaster waiting to happen. 

It’s a full-time job just taking care of ourselves. Feeling like I’m responsible for someone else’s needs, and they’re feeling responsible for my needs, that feels icky. That feels like manipulation. And it leads to constantly wanting to control the other person so that I can be happy. And they’re constantly trying to control me, so they can be happy. That’s not going to work. You can’t control another person.

There’s nothing that they could possibly do to make you as happy as you want to be. You are responsible for meeting your own needs. I’ll take care of my needs. You take care of yours. And then we can both be comfortable in our own skin, being exactly who we are. So remember, you’re not responsible for my needs and I’m not responsible for your needs. Because who’s better at taking care of you than you? So just to recap, the first tip to stop trying to control everyone is to let them be. 

Second, happiness is a choice. If you believe the world is responsible for how you feel, then you’re going to want to tell the world how to behave so that you can feel good, but that’s attempting to control circumstances. 

We tend to think that we have logical and reasonable expectations of people. We’re just asking them to be kind and courteous, tell the truth, be helpful, but don’t they already know these things? And maybe they are choosing to be that way, or maybe they’re not. 

We think other people will make us happy, but they can’t. Only we can make ourselves happy. And when you think about all the expectations you place on people, wouldn’t it be amazing if they behaved in this certain way, if they followed what you wanted exactly? What would you be thinking and what would you be feeling? Because it’s not their behavior that’s causing you to feel good, it’s the thoughts you’re having about that person that’s making you feel good. That person doesn’t have to do any of those things in order for you to feel that way.

Again, a recap, the first tip to stop trying to control everyone is to let them be. Second, happiness is a choice. 

Third, control what you can control. Start taking responsibility for your own rules and operating manuals for yourself. Most of us can’t even manage ourselves, yet we want to control other people, which seems somewhat ridiculous. If we can’t even control our own behavior, how do we think we’re going to be able to control someone else’s? That just creates frustration. 

What is it that you want them to do differently? And why do you want them to do it your way? What’s actually happening is when they’re doing what you want them to do, you’re deciding to think: they respect me, they like me, they value my opinion or my contribution. And then we feel good. We feel appreciated. 

But when they don’t follow through, we also make it about us. We think it means something negative. And then we feel bad about that. We’re not taking responsibility for how we’re feeling and that’s giving all our power away to that other person, simply based on how they’re choosing to behave. By thinking someone else’s behavior can cause our emotions, we’re setting ourselves up to feel a whole lot of negative emotion and to feel completely powerless. 

We’re thinking that the only way that we can feel better is getting this other person to change. And that means we have no control here, but we do. So, by all means make requests, but don’t set unrealistic expectations. No one has to change anything for us to feel a certain way.

All we have to do is start taking responsibility for how we feel. Then we will feel better most of the time. You can have expectations. You can even make requests for what you’d like, but don’t hang your feelings on them. And don’t rely on that person to follow through on those in order for you to feel happy, or valued, or appreciated.

You’re just setting yourself up for failure. And more importantly, you’re giving your power away. 

Allow the people in your life to do what they want to do, how they want to do it, and when they want to do it, regardless of whether you’ve made a request or not. When they don’t follow through, that’s not a reason to feel powerless, frustrated, or upset. 

You’re just trying to control that other person so that you can feel better and then blaming them for how that makes you feel. They can’t possibly provide us with the emotional life that we want, even if they did follow through on all our expectations. 

Sometimes you do need to have expectations like when you’re a parent, for your children, and if you’re a boss, for your employees. If they don’t follow through on those expectations that have been set for them, there are consequences, but you don’t have to tie your emotions to it. Those are just expectations that you’ve set and communicated, and they get to choose. 

But somehow, when it comes to other people in our lives, we’re tempted to be disappointed, frustrated, upset, and blame them when they behave like grown adults. It’s time to learn to separate out our expectations from our emotional life. 

So set boundaries, set consequences. You’ll become a better parent and a better manager. This is the thing that you did, and this is the consequence for those actions. You don’t have to get mad. You can still talk to them pleasantly, as hard as that may be at times.

Help enforce consequences without making it personal, without making it emotional. You’re not attacking them as a person. You have to be able to separate out those things. 

Nobody wants to follow someone else’s rules for them. And even when they do, they aren’t likely to do it right. They probably won’t do it the way we want them to, so we’re constantly setting ourselves up for disappointment. 

And it goes both ways. It’s totally fine for people to have expectations of you as well. People can expect things from you, or want you to do things. That’s totally up to them. 

Remember, how you respond is totally up to you. You don’t have to take responsibility for other people’s feelings. You’re only responsible for your own emotions and they’re responsible for theirs. So take back control of your life and give them control of theirs.

So again, a recap, the first tip to stop trying to control everyone is to let them be. Second, happiness is a choice. Third, control what you can control. 

And fourth, stop arguing with reality. People don’t always tell the truth, so stop expecting them to. People aren’t always on time, so stop expecting them to be. And people aren’t always kind, so stop expecting them to be. 

Give people the freedom to be who they are. You’ll be so much happier instead of being miserable all the time, because people just don’t comply with all your rules. Start accepting what is and focus on yourself and your own behavior. 

And by all means, model the behavior you want to see. When we try and change ourselves, instead of trying to change the world, we automatically create change in the world, by changing ourselves from the inside. Your experience of the world is dependent on how you’re thinking about it all. 

We are motivated by reward, and by gratification. We want instant gratification and we’re far less concerned about long-term consequences. We want to feel good right now. This may look like overeating, being reactive, losing your mind, flipping people off, yelling at people – I might be speaking from experience here. And that’s when you’re in instant gratification. 

Recognize that it’s delayed gratification that is so much more powerful. It allows you to get what you want most, instead of what you want right now, because indulging in instant gratification always comes at a cost. It prevents you from getting that ultimate gratification, that thing that really matters to you. 

And we’re all looking for approval from other people and any kind of disapproval freaks us out. We forget that we create the feelings with our minds, with the way we think. If we want to feel approval, feel acceptance, feel like we belong, we need to generate those emotions from within. 

We don’t need other people to provide us with that approval, the acceptance or the connection. We can generate it from within, by how we think about what’s going on around us and the people around us. 

We can allow ourselves to feel whatever we are feeling and take full responsibility for it. When you’re reacting and indulging in urges and desires, you have very little authority because you’re not owning it. You’re blaming it on someone else or something else. So you don’t feel that you have agency over it. 

Acknowledge that the reason you feel the way you feel is because of how you’re thinking. And there is no emotion that you can experience that you need to react to or indulge in. Just allow it to be there, without resisting it or avoiding it. All your emotions are caused by your thoughts, so you can press the pause button.

You can allow those feelings to be there without reacting to them, without needing to change someone else. And research shows that when we allow our feelings, they only last a few minutes, when we actually allow them to work through us. So, after that, you are in control of how you feel. 

Think about the expectations that you have in your life for other people and ask what they may be costing you? Do you have the same expectations for yourself? 

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download the Four Tips to Stop Trying to Control Everyone at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode three. 

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch. I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com. And if you liked the show, please tell a friend, subscribe, rate, and review. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thank you for joining me.