To make matters worse, we we often have a nasty habit of turning these personal preferences into rules for other people. When we do this we use works like “should,” “have to,” and “ought to.” We take our own values and desires and put them on someone else. We try to control other epoel and what they do, think, and say.

We start to think about how other people should or should not behave. We create rules about how people around us should respond, such as “a friend should call you back within an hour,” or “my husband should know to buy me flowers without me having to ask.” When those around us break our rules, we get angry and punish them.

For some people it is entitlement, or the belief that bad things shouldn’t happen to me. For others it is perfectionism, or the thought that, “this is the right way to do it. You have to do it this way.” But the result is the same. If someone does not follow our rules we get upset.

I once heard a wife tell her husband, “This is the right way to pack a suitcase. You’d have to be an idiot to do it any other way.” The husband then responded, “You are wrong. This is how it has to be. Any other way is stupid.”

Both the husband and the wife were angry. They had personal preferences for how a suitcase should be packed and then turned their own personal preferences into absolute rules for the other person. By doing so they were being selfish, and this caused more anger and more fights for them.

And in the end, does it really matter how you pack a suitcase? Is that really a flight you want to have?

But often we try to control other people to make them do things the way we want them to. And this almost always leads to problems. Trying to change someone else (or waiting for them to change) is just not going to work.

The hard truth is that you can’t change any other person in this world other than yourself.

It is important to understand that there are limits to what you can control. You have to control what you can control. And getting someone else to change is NOT an option, because it is not something that you can control. You can’t change another person. That’s not possible. You only have control of your own actions.

You can threaten a person. You can argue with a person. You can give a convincing logical presentation to a person. You can bribe a person. You can make them a PowerPoint presentation. You can hold a gun up to a person’s head. But no matter what you try, you do not have the power to control another person. You cannot make another person do anything. You just can’t.

And what happens is two things. If you try to control someone you get upset because they are not doing what you want them to do. They are not following your rules. And meanwhile, they are getting upset because they don’t like being bossed around or told what to do. Is is a poison.

If I wanted to ruin a relationship I would tell both people to try and control the other as much as possible. That would do it. If you are demanding and creating selfish rules for how someone else must act. It will do two things. It will make you angry. And it will also make them angry. You can bet on it.

The sooner you focus on what you can control (your own actions) and stop focusing on what you can’t (someone else’s actions) the better things will go for you.