Life does not need to be a struggle.

Yet this is often pre­cisely what it becomes, due to our inabil­ity to go with the flow. We buck, kick, scream, fight—and end up in bad places.

This hap­pens from a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing about how we are ‘sup­posed’ to be liv­ing our lives. The two choices are:

• com­plain and do noth­ing
• accept and act

The first one is the trou­ble­some one. In this ver­sion of real­ity, I dis­tress myself over some sit­u­a­tion (the water run­ning down­stream,) and decide to change the exter­nal sit­u­a­tion.

Now, what I’m doing here is judging.

Judg­ing is some­thing we all do, and cer­tain ways of doing it do not work.
What doesn’t work is to make a pic­ture of how an exter­nal sit­u­a­tion ought to be, and then expend great effort try­ing to force the exter­nal real­ity to match the imag­i­nary ver­sion in your head.

This is the root cause of most con­flict. It is also non­sen­si­cal, as demand­ing that some­thing change begs the ques­tion, why would some­one or some­thing change just because I want it to?

Typ­i­cally, this is where we get into the odd duo of, “It’s not fair,” and “If you loved me…” (vari­ant, “I’m spe­cial so you should do it my way.”) Both of these describe the notion that the world is actu­ally pay­ing any atten­tion to you at all.

We’ve end­lessly sug­gested that you pad­dle with the stream. By this we mean that the wise per­son does not fight the crowd (the cur­rent) or make demands of the crowd, but rather fol­lows the path or direc­tion that actu­ally works.

Now, notice that I did not say, “Fol­low the crowd.” I said, “Fol­low what works.”

This is never about going along with things you judge to be wrong, stu­pid, or harm­ful. This is about steer­ing a path away from such things.

In order to do this, it is essen­tial to remem­ber that you will have to keep your focus on your­self. By this, I mean that you need to uncover what you think and feel about the sit­u­a­tion, with­out blam­ing or fin­ger pointing.

Then, you ask your­self, “What, specif­i­cally, can I do to alter my rela­tion­ship with this situation,in order to move in a direc­tion I want to go?”

This can appear tricky, so let me try this. Most peo­ple never do a sin­gle thing to improve the sit­u­a­tion they are com­plain­ing about. They just stand there and blame the sit­u­a­tion, (or per­son) and get sad, indig­nant, angry, what­ever. Or, they sigh and say, “Oh well, I give up. So, I’m just going to sit here.”

The approach we are sug­gest­ing is this: step up to the plate. Drop all the self-righteous judg­ments and demands that the world and oth­ers change, and instead, change your­self.

There is always some­thing I can do to change the direc­tion I’m tak­ing with a sit­u­a­tion I am confronting—something that requires noth­ing of the sit­u­a­tion. And this makes sense, as sit­u­a­tions never change until you do. This is just the way it is.

Is it fair? Well, imag­ine a uni­verse where the rules changed arbi­trar­ily, at your whim, and also at the whim of oth­ers. (You didn’t think this would only work for you, right???) We’d be insane in short order. No, it’s best that “the way it is, is the way it is.” Until we act.

We can walk away, act dif­fer­ently, sim­ply observe, calm ourselves.

Any of these approaches will instantly change the only thing you can change—your rela­tion­ship to the situation.

Your job is never to get oth­ers to see the error of their ways. Your job is to see the error of your ways.

Even par­ents do not make their chil­dren to do any­thing. They sim­ply cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that demands com­pli­ance with social norms. Once the kid is 6 or so, they pretty much can do what they want to, and only social pres­sure keeps them sort of in line. Once they are adults, they act as they act. It is called being an adult.

You may be tempted to avoid this idea by think­ing, “But, peo­ple will do all sorts of weird and self­ish things with this idea.” Here’s a hint, if you go there.

This is not about “peo­ple.” There are no “peo­ple.” That’s just you, com­ing up with another excuse not to act. There is no way to pre-determine what ‘peo­ple’ will do.
The only ques­tion is, “What will you do?”

Let go of the bitch­ing, moan­ing and com­plain­ing and get on with what you need to do. Stop tilt­ing against the wind­mill of other people’s drama, and deal with your own. Act like a self-responsible adult by doing the only thing you can—act respon­si­bly.