People are like the weather. Do you get mad at the weather?
Most people don’t get upset or angry at the weather, because they understand that it’s hard to predict and outside of their control. Unfortunately, fewer people understand that this same principle often applies to people as well.
Our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions aren’t as easy to control as we think they are.
When you reflect on your own behaviors, I’m sure you can think of many times when you’ve acted in ways that seemed irrational and didn’t make sense.
When you’re in a negative mood, that can spillover into your actions in ways that you don’t usually expect.
You’re having a bad morning and someone accidentally bumps into you on the train. Normally, you’d let it slide – but because you’re in a bad mood and feeling particularly overwhelmed and stressed out, you decide to snap back and yell at them instead.
We’ve all been there in one form or another. Life is hard.
And life isn’t just hard for you, it’s hard for everyone else too.
People have just as much trouble managing their emotions and behaviors as you do.
In this way, we can’t expect to have complete control over our responses, and we can’t expect ourselves to predict or manage other people’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as well.
People have trouble predicting their own behaviors, let alone predicting other people’s responses.
In many ways, people are like the weather. There are a million potential reasons why they acted a certain way in a certain situation, and most of them don’t have anything to do with you.
When someone gives you an attitude, you don’t know where that’s coming from.
Maybe they didn’t get enough sleep the night before, or they feel a bit under the weather, or they had an argument with their spouse earlier, or someone they know passed away recently.
All of those are potential reasons why someone may be negative toward you that have nothing to do with you.
You can’t take everything personally – in the same way you wouldn’t take the weather personally.
It’s not your fault when it rains, or it’s cloudy, or a storm rolls through. Most people don’t blame themselves for the weather, because they understand that it’s based on factors that are outside of their power and control.
The next time someone gives you unnecessary negativity, ask yourself, “Would I get mad at the weather?” Then let it pass, just like any other storm.
One big pitfall in life is our desire to change people. We want people to be a certain way and act a certain way; and when they don’t, we try to change them.
And then we become that much more disappointed and hurt when we realize we can’t change people as much as we thought we could.
It’s easier to accept people than try to change them.
If you’re being honest with yourself, you understand it’s difficult enough to change yourself, and that’s something you have a degree of control over.
But how many times have you told yourself to stop eating junk food, or exercise more, or go to bed earlier, yet your old habits continue to persist?
Self-change is hard, changing other people is even harder.
Remember that the next time you are trying to change someone. You may be luckier performing a rain dance.
Now let me leave you with this wonderful quote from the legendary Carl Rogers…
- “People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.’ I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”
What if we could all look at people more from that perspective?
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