Walking away doesn’t mean agreeing with your adversary. On the contrary, it means nothing more than that you have made the choice to disengage. These days, I actually relish every opportunity to let a situation pass me by that would have engaged my ire in the past. I feel empowered every time I make this choice.
— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 18
Happy women know that with each phase of life, they give up something, but they also get something in return.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 236
Perspective will come in retrospect.
We could strain for hours today for the meaning of something that may come in an instant next year.
Let it go. We can let go of our need to figure things out, to feel in control.
Now is the time to be. To feel. To go through it. To allow things to happen. To learn. To let whatever is being worked out in us take its course.
In hindsight, we will know. It will become clear. For today, being is enough. We have been told that all things shall work out for good in our life. We can trust that to happen, even if we cannot see the place today’s events will hold in the larger picture.
— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 263
Stop making excuses for other people.
Stop making excuses for ourselves.
While it is our goal to develop compassion and achieve forgiveness, acceptance, and love, it is also our goal to accept reality and hold people accountable for their behavior. We can also hold ourselves accountable for our own behavior, and, at the same time, have compassion and understanding for ourselves.
— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 260
When the deepest desire we feel within our hearts is for something other than God, a spirit of entitlement develops. We see ourselves as needing something we don’t have and we believe we should have. Justice is on our side. So we think. Prayer becomes demand when desire becomes our tyrant.
Soon we’re caught in the addictive cycle. Whatever brings satisfaction relieves pain for the moment, then creates deeper emptiness that, in turn, more rudely clamors for relief. We lose our power to choose. The will becomes a slave to whatever god makes us feel better. We die as persons while Satan chuckles.
— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 86
Happy women know that saying no to others gives you the opportunity to say yes to yourself.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 234
Many of us think our most meaningful work has to do with minding other people’s business. Why is it so hard to let other people have their own journey? Why do we persist in interfering in other people’s lives, especially when we reap so few benefits? . . .
How sad that we perceive our own well-being as so tied to the decisions, even occasional whims, of others. But we do it, again and again, and our lives are never better for it, at least in the long run. In the short run, trying to help a loved one live his or her life may seem like the right thing to do — it may even be engaging for awhile — but taking charge of our own lives is as much work as any one of us needs to experience. The work of someone else’s life belongs to that person and God.
— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 11-12
Recognize that what your partner does is a problem, but it’s not the problem. The problem is how you react to what your partner does. If you make your partner the problem, all you can do is hope that he changes or try to get him to change. That’s a disempowered position. As you increase your ability to respond to the negative things your partner does, you are going to empower yourself and increase your own self-esteem. This single concept is the driving principle behind almost all books on improving relationships.
— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 141
Remember that a boundary always deals with yourself, not the other person. You are not demanding that your spouse do something — even respect your boundaries. You are setting boundaries to say what you will do or will not do. Only these kinds of boundaries are enforceable, for you do have control over yourself. Do not confuse boundaries with a new way to control a spouse. It is the opposite. It is giving up control and beginning to love. You are giving up trying to control your spouse and allowing him to take responsibility for his behavior.
In a marriage, as in no other relationship, the need for revealing your boundaries is important. Passive boundaries, such as withdrawal, triangulation, pouting, affairs, and passive-aggressive behavior, are extremely destructive to a relationship. Passive ways of showing people that they do not have control over you never lead to intimacy. They never educate the other on who you really are; they only estrange.
Boundaries need to be communicated first verbally and then with actions.
Stop trying so hard to make it happen.
Stop doing so much, if doing so much is wearing you out or not achieving the desired results. Stop thinking so much and so hard about it. Stop worrying so about it. Stop trying to force, to manipulate, to coerce, or to make it happen.
Making things happen is controlling. We can take positive action to help things happen. We can do our part. But many of us do much more than our part. We overstep the boundaries from caring and doing our part into controlling, caretaking, and coercing.
Controlling is self-defeating. It doesn’t work. By overextending ourselves to make something happen, we may actually be stopping it from happening.
Do your part in relaxed, peaceful harmony. Then let it go. Just let it go. Force yourself to let it go, if necessary. “Act as if.” Put as much energy into letting go as you have into trying to control. You’ll get much better results.
— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 206-207