52. Why You Can't Change People (And What to Do Instead)

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Hey friends, welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy that you're here. I'm your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon And today I want to bring you a topic that I hope helps you create a lot more inner peace and just feeling so much better. And the topic really is about being in right relationship with yourself and being in right relationship with the people around you, the people that you love, that you lead, that you are in relationship with. So the reason why I'm bringing you this topic is because I have been seeing a lot of my clients butting up against sort of this issue and it's creating this subtle level of frustration. They don't even realize that they're creating for themselves. So what we're gonna talk about today is what it means to be in right relationship with those around you and really accepting that the journey that they're on, how this has shown up historically and how we can start practicing it now. All right, let's jump in. So the central premise of today is that we're not all meant to have the same exact experience in life. We're not all meant to have the same journey. And when we assume that we are, it creates a lot of suffering in our lives. And the way it shows up is we want everyone to think the way we think, agree with what we think. and just essentially be living similar lives to us, have our same values. And that right there creates suffering. listen friends, there's so much suffering in this world. We don't need to add on to that. And so I'll share how this has shown up. So I have had clients that I've worked with that are experiencing massive transformations. They are coming to me with specific problems. They are realigning their lives and their values and they're experiencing massive transformations and it's really beautiful to witness. And what they're noticing is they go back into their lives and they're butting up against folks that are at the same level of consciousness that they've always been at, but now they are at a different level of consciousness. And so they are experiencing some resistance. Like, why can't they just you know, these are the questions that they say, why can't my significant other do it this way? Or why do they always think that? Or why are they always so reactive? And it creates resistance for them and that resistance creates suffering. And the other way I've seen this is with my clients who are coaches and entrepreneurs where they've experienced transformation in their lives, which is why they were coaches. And now they're working with their clients and they're trying to pull their clients along and trying to trying to keep their clients from actually having their own life experience because sometimes clients are going to disagree with you and they have to have their own journey to really grow. And the coach is experiencing some resistance to that. And so what I realized is what's not happening here is we're not honoring divine timing. Divine timing really means that, listen, everyone's meant to have their own life experience. at the time that they're supposed to have it and we cannot rush another soul's journey. And when we honor that, honor our own sacred journey and honor the sacred journey that everyone else is on, it supports us in being in right relationship with others. And when we are in right relationship with others, we get to come home and be in right relationship with ourselves. So this is not a new topic. The that not every soul is here to have the same experience is probably one of the oldest ideas that has been in the consciousness for centuries and centuries. In fact, across ancient Hindu philosophy, there's this concept of Dharma. And Dharma speaks to a soul's unique duty and path, the particular role and lessons that we are here to fulfill in this lifetime. And there are no two Dharmas that are identical. So what is right for one person might be entirely wrong for another person. Two twins walking this planet at the same exact time might have two very different ways to look at the world. And again, that seems so obvious because it is obvious, but the resistance comes when one of the twins is like, no, hold on, why are you doing it that way? Or the parent looks at the twins and says, why does one have to be so different than the other? What's so interesting too is that there's an ancient text, an ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita that says, follow your path. It doesn't say follow the one true path. It says follow your path. This is also true in many indigenous traditions around the world that speak to each of us arriving with a very distinct medicine that we are supposed to develop. It's a gift or maybe a wound that we're supposed to heal. that is ours to carry alone. And when we heal that wound or we develop that gift, we're able to offer that back to our community as a way of service. In fact, when you think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the very top of Maslow's hierarchy is something in the Western world called self-actualization, but that's a very Western construct. The construct of the tip of the iceberg being used self-actualized for the sake of you. Because really, when you think about it on a larger sense, what Maslow adapted came from Indigenous traditions. And the top of the hierarchy to Indigenous traditions is not self-actualization for the sense of self. It's you develop your gifts for the sense of giving back to community, for the sense of being part of something so much bigger than you. And that really speaks to this concept that everyone walking this planet, we're all part of this interconnected, beautiful, sacred web. And whenever we develop our own gifts, walk our own journey, our own path, respect the path that others are on, because I cannot walk my path if they don't walk theirs. When we get to respect our specific paths, when we get to respect that we are all walking our own sacred paths and we are interconnected, we get to see that we're playing these like roles in each other's life because we're all part of this big interconnected web of light. It's like this visual for any of you that have any experience in ecology. When you look underground, especially with many networks of trees and fungi, for example, underneath the ground, there's this really wild thing that happens. The deeper rooted the trees are, the more that the the roots of the trees, of the plants, of the fungi, the more they connect to each other and the more they share resources with each other through messages, through electrical wavelengths that they share with each other. They call it the wood-wide web underground. And it's a really beautiful concept that the more you are deeply rooted and ingrained, the more you are focused on your own path, deeply rooted and ingrained. the more you can be in communication and in communion and in support with others. So the more you thrive in your own sacred journey, the more you're able to support others thriving. And in many reincarnation-based spiritual traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism, the soul doesn't just live once. The soul returns over and over and over again to learn what it hasn't learned yet, which means the circumstances that you find yourself in The family you find yourself in, maybe the trauma that you've experienced, the relationships that keep breaking down the same way over and over again, those are not random. In fact, they were assigned to you. They're part of your life curriculum. And it's part of the reason why your soul, it's what your soul is here to learn in this lifetime. So your soul will keep returning to the same lessons until it's learned it. So I think, ⁓ I think that's a really beautiful way to think about our life and to really accept that I'm not meant to have the same journey as my sister, my cousin, my children, my husband, my clients. We're all meant to have our own journey and we're interconnected for a reason. We're here to support each other. We're not meant to walk this life alone, but my process is my process and their process is theirs. And I get to accept them for where they are. And really that concept of acceptance, that right there is the key to the piece because what it looks like when we don't accept is we judge them for thinking differently than we think, for wanting something different, for not seeing the world the way we're seeing the world through our lens. Now, this idea does get a little bit complicated. anyway, it got really complicated for me when I think about oppression. So I used to be a social justice activist before I went to medical school. And for me, I hated the concept of accepting this journey because it made it feel like passivity. It made it feel like I was just accepting harm or I was just accepting oppression. And I had this ingrained thought, which is I have a responsibility to act. have a responsibility to make a difference and to change things. So if I just accept it, doesn't it mean that I'm just standing by while harm is being done? And so I think that's really important to explore. So we're gonna spend a little bit of time here. And I think that the answer to this question is no. And the lives of some of history's greatest changemakers really show us why. And I'll give you two examples. One is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And one of the things that I think is really interesting from his example is that he did not rage against the people perpetuated segregation. He looked at systems ⁓ he looked at the human beings inside those systems with this radical, almost incomprehensible amount of love. And he did not need the segregationists to be walking a different path. He didn't need them to be different in order for him to take action. His activism was empowered by resisting the people that were there. His activism was powered by something so different, by something that I think gives you like this never-ending fuel. His activism was powered by this clear-eyed vision of what was possible. And the other example, of course, is Gandhi. Gandhi was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachers. Martin Luther King studied Gandhi's Ahimsa. Ahimsa is... this nonviolence and ahimsa means nonviolence. And that was Gandhi's ⁓ mantra. And he didn't see it as merely a tactic to resistance. Gandhi saw it as a spiritual orientation. You act not from hatred of the oppressor, but you act from love of truth. And that's where Martin Luther King got his ahimsa, got his practice of nonviolence. And both of them show us that you can take action to change what you don't agree with, not from pushing against what is, not from resisting what is, but instead from having a clear vision of what is possible, from having a clear vision of what is truth. And I think about truth in this sense as capital T truth. In my worldview, truth is love, truth is compassion, truth is equality, truth is joy. That's my worldview. And so if I look at the world that way, and then I see oppression, I can come out and say, Hey, hold on a second. You might not agree with me oppressor, you might think that you're better than you might think that, you know, these folks are less than, and, okay, that's the way you think. ⁓ ⁓ know the capital T truth of love of compassion, the capital T truth that we're all equal. And that is where we're working towards. And what that moves us away from is this, the duality of us versus them. It's like, I am fighting against this person or I am fighting against this system. No, I don't, I don't want to fight against a system. All that does is perpetuate fighting. It perpetuates the us versus them. What I want to do is let that go and All I want to do is orient towards truth, towards love, towards compassion. And when you think about it, there's really a profound difference between reacting from resistance. You are wrong and I will fight you until you agree me versus acting from a sense of acceptance. ⁓ I see what is. I accept the reality of this moment. And from this place, from this clear place with an open heart, I choose to create something different. The first one, when you react from resistance, it creates a lot of exhaustion, energetic exhaustion, and it ties your peace to outcomes that you cannot control, to us versus them, to you constantly having to prove yourself over and over again. you imagine constantly having to prove yourself over and over again? Listen, I can. That's was the story of my life forever. I thought that that was what I needed to do, that I constantly needed to prove my worth over and over again. That's super exhausting. second way of looking at it, instead of acting from resistance, is Dr. Martin Luther King called the strength to love. It's what activists across traditions have discovered, that you can hold someone's humanity as sacred, you can accept the reality of where they are, and you can still work. tirelessly to change the conditions that created the situation. It's like you're not fighting against a human being. You're fighting against all of the conditions that existed to create the situation. I'm moving towards capital T truth towards love and compassion. And one thing that I think is really important here is when you accept, especially in these instances and these examples I'm giving about social justice, when you practice acceptance in this sense. This does not mean that you're agreeing with what you see. It doesn't even mean that you're endorsing All it is is you're accepting truth for what it is. You are not fighting against the reality. This acceptance in this form is the absence of the illusion that it's your resistance to what is that's going to create the change. Your resistance to what is will not create the change. Your resistance to what is It's just gonna cause exhaustion and pain. In fact, I think a really good analogy to this is a stove. Let's say that you have a stove that's turned on and it's hot and you walk over and you put your hand down on the stove and you burn your hand. You can accept the fact that the stove's on and it's hot and you can move your hand off and turn off the stove or you can keep your hand on the stove and just be so angry that the stove is on. Why is the stove on? Why is it burning my hand? I hate you stove. Turn off, stove, turn off. That's resistance. And when you, and I know that's kind of a silly analogy, but I think that that's a really good one because it really paints what's possible when we resist versus accept. Because when you really think about it, what becomes possible when you honor someone's journey? So let's say that you've experienced massive transformation and now you see the world so differently and you're so open and you can see what it's like to practice from a place of, to live your life and practice from a place of intention and possibility. you know the power of your words and you're changing the way that you see the world. And then you have, I don't know, your significant other or your sister or someone coming up to you and they're still in their same level of consciousness. So ⁓ can continue to resist by trying to like, them along or pointing out what they're wrong or continuing to try to correct them whenever they say things that don't make sense to you when you know they're using language that's going to pull them down. You can do that if you want and just notice what happens. They're probably going to close off. They're probably going to push back. That's probably not going to get them to change their mind. But when you stop trying to change someone and start just honoring where they are with compassion, with acceptance, Like in just honoring, like you used to be there too. We've, we've all, we all go through our journey. Something shifts, something shifts that level of acceptance opens something up. Well, first you stop looking energy and second, the mental bandwidth that you were using to push against them, to argue against them. You can just use that mental bandwidth for yourself. You're more open to just accept them for who they are. that all becomes available to you again. That energy becomes available to you again. and you experience a level of acceptance and acceptance creates peace instead of resistance. And it's not the piece of indifference like, whatever, but it's this piece of like, I think it's like this deeper trust, a trust that life knows what it's doing. Call it whatever you want, universal consciousness, divine spirit, God, that universal consciousness knows. what it's doing, that this person's path is not a mistake that needs to be corrected. what you'll start to notice is this really interesting paradoxical effect that when you release trying to change someone and just accept them for who they are, you tend to be much more effective at creating large scale change, not less, because ⁓ you change by example. I remember I had a friend who had this really intense massive transformation weekend many years ago over like 10, 15 years ago. This is before I was on my own transformational journey they were calling me every day, ⁓ to understand, you have to do this, like you don't understand. I change all these things and I'm like, and continuing to tell me, like using all this language that just didn't resonate with me. And I felt like they were being really pushy trying to get me to change. And it was such a turnoff. And I'm like, man, I didn't even want to answer that person's call anymore. They were one of my closest friends. And then fast forward like a couple months, maybe like nine months later, we stayed super close and that person stopped talking to me about that program. They stopped talking to me about it completely. But they didn't change. had transformed and their transformation was sustained. They were calmer, they were more resilient. I could just sense their energy. They were more at peace, they were more loving, they were more accepting. It was the most beautiful transformation. And when they stopped trying to impose who they were on me and I could just witness their transformation, all of a sudden I wanted what they had. I was like, Whoa, how'd that happen? Like, I want some of that. And they, and they were more effective in getting me to change. They were more effective in influencing me, not because they were trying to control me, but just by example of who they were, just by their energy. And that's what's possible for you. When you honor your sacred journey and honor the journey that others are on and let go of control, trying to change them. You are much more effective. by how you show up, by your ways of being. Okay, so how can you start practicing this now? I think the simplest way is to notice when you are starting to show up with resistance, when you're starting to resist someone else's journey. And let me give you some examples. Let's say that you're at work. And you just have a colleague that's either slower than you are at certain things, or maybe they are more likely to take risks or they're more risk averse than you. And that can create a lot of frustration because you don't see the world the way they see the world. So as soon as you'll notice that frustration, notice what that feels like in your body. There's usually like a tension, a tightness, maybe your shoulders get tight or maybe your jaw, clenches or your stomach. feels like in knots and you might say something like, oh, there they go again, or I can't believe they're doing it that way. Whatever it is that you say to yourself, just notice are signs that you are resisting who they are. And instead of what you can do is accept the fact that for whatever reason your paths have crossed and they're here with different set of gifts, you know, than you have. And what if your job isn't to convert them? to do everything exactly the way you do it, but instead to learn from them, to find that maybe there's different ways to do things. Maybe there's a different way to think about it, find the places where your different paths create something that neither of you could do alone. It's the same thing if you are in a relationship. Let's say that your significant other doesn't handle conflict the way you do. Instead of deciding that their way is the absolute wrong way, what if you just get curious about the journey that shaped them, except that Maybe you need to communicate slightly differently with them. Maybe you need to release control. Maybe you need to let go of whatever stories you're holding onto, what you're making it mean that they don't handle conflict the way you handle conflict. And in this case, this doesn't mean you don't communicate what it is that you want or you need. You don't communicate boundaries. Of course you do. It just means you stop treating the differences as a problem that needs to be solved. And instead, you're just more curious and open. I think there's two more examples I'm gonna give you. I think the hardest one and then the one that I think we are, we probably underappreciate the most, but is one of the most important. hardest one I think is as a parent, because as a parent, it can be really hard to accept the journey of our children's lives if it's not the life that we think that they're supposed to have. You know, we bring these beautiful souls into the world ⁓ they come. through us, but they are not ours. Like we don't own them. They're here to have their own journey. And listen, I say that as a mom of two young kids. And it's even really hard for me to say that out loud because I know that I believe it, but it's hard. It's really, really tough. I have two young kids and I love them tremendously. And my love for them and my desire to want to keep them protected sometimes will show up in thinking that I know that I must know what's always best for them. there's a variation of this that can be, ⁓ where the resistance shows up because there can be, you can come from love, the sense of beautiful love, but what you don't want to do ⁓ turn that sense of love into control because however well-intentioned we can be. ⁓ control like, ⁓ you can't do that or this is what's best for you control communicates that you don't trust their soul's journey. It communicates you know, they have to do it your way because your way is the only right way. And honoring their journey though, it doesn't mean that you abandon them. ⁓ It just that you trust that they're strong enough to handle. Sometimes it's going to be pain. Sometimes it's going to be ⁓ heartbreak, sometimes it's going to be like mean girls at school or bullies that they're strong enough to handle that because this is a little off topic. But I think our role as parents is to give them the guardrails, the love, the compassion, the support so that they know that man, the world is hard. They're going to experience a lot of hard stuff. We are here to help you bounce back from that. We're not here to keep you from experiencing the hard stuff because Hard is going to happen the rest of your life. I don't want my kids to be super fragile. I want them to be anti-fragile, to borrow title of a book I read. I want them to be anti-fragile and adaptable and be able to experience the hard stuff and bounce back. I want my kids to be resilient. And that means that they have to experience the tough stuff too. And I think that's one of the hardest ones to really accept the journey, especially if their journey is different than ours. ⁓ have a client who's very high functioning, very neurotypical person, and they had a child who was very different than they were. And was a journey to release control that you know what's best for your child. Your child has to go through their own journey. last example I'll give you, I think is one of the most important and I think one of the most underappreciated. ⁓ And is practicing this application of accepting the sacred journey, practicing this for yourself. because how often do we resist our own journey that we're on? And the resistance can show up as wishing we were further along, saying that something is taking too long, comparing where we are in life to where someone else is in life, believing that we should have learned this lesson before, judging all of the past, ⁓ calling mistakes, ⁓ judging all of that. All of that is resisting our own journey, resisting our own path. But what if your journey was also sacred? What if the place you are right now is exactly where you're supposed to be? And I don't say that to gaslight or to, you know, to sort of spiritually bypass the pain that we might be suffering. I say that as a truth, as a capital T truth. Like, what if this is the life you're supposed to be living exactly as it is? So. I leave you with all that because I think one more question that we can start to entertain when the resistance shows up for us is that same exact question. Like, what if this is the experience that this soul is supposed to have in this lifetime? And again, it's not because you agree with exactly everything that's happening. It's not because you're not going to set boundaries when you need to set boundaries, but because this question by itself is going to interrupt the suffering, the resistance that we start to experience in our own bodies when we start to judge the journey that someone else is on. So just notice, sweet friends, just notice when you're spending energy trying to change someone's mind rather than communicating your truth. Let others have the experience that they're supposed to have. Let them have their own thoughts. Let them have their own feelings. They can have their own thoughts and feelings. They can have a favorite food, a favorite food that's not yours. All of that is okay. Notice when frustration with another person is really just a judgment about how they should be different. And notice when your piece is contingent on someone else changing. And then gently, without any judgment, practice as letting go. How to setting them beyond their path while you stay on yours. Two paths, both of them sacred, both of them unfolding as exactly as they're supposed to. All right, sweet friends, with that, believe you and I will see you next week. Adios.