You Can't Fix People

I learned a long time ago that you can’t control anything outside of your own control. Growing up, my Dad would tell this to my brother and me any time we would be frustrated with other people.

Specifically, he’d say, “you can’t be angry with the way someone reacted to something just because that’s not how you would have reacted.”

And he’s completely spot on.

It’s incredibly valid to be angry or frustrated with someone or something because it hurts you or someone else.

But what isn’t valid, is being frustrated with someone because they didn’t approach a situation the way you would have. They simply just did it a different way, and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is when someone does something out of ignorance, anger, spite, or hate. But again, you can’t control them.

The moral of what he was trying to get across is that it's wasteful time spent trying to change what other people choose to do. All you can do is change your own behavior, and hope that through changing your own behavior you create your own change.

You can’t control how the rest of the world reacts to things, all you can control is your own behaviors and actions. And through changing your own behaviors and actions, you create a more positive and healthy environment, which inevitably affects those around you. Emotions and actions are truly contagious. What other people decide to do with them, is their choice.

So, I’ll tell you a personal story...

I had a friend I met in high school who remained in my life for many years. Our friendship wintered the distance of moves, high school, college, and on. But, this friendship was a very hard one.

Our friendship started out of the blue one day on a bus ride to school when I was living in Florida. I was sitting there with a girl who lived a few neighborhoods over, and he and his friend started up a conversation with us. In the beginning, our friendship solely lived on those bus rides to and from school.

One day in the spring during an English class we shared together, we were challenged to bring in some sort of cuisine from an era of literature. While eating a salad that one of the other girls brought in, he turned around to tell me that I was eating it wrong and I should use my fork a different way. From there, and I couldn’t tell you how, we started talking more and more, and the friendship grew.

The friendship turned from random conversations to staying up late exchanging our favorite Led Zeppelin songs, watching the movie Coraline together, and spending hours talking about life and our respective goals.

And then, I moved to Tennessee.

We’d go weeks, months even without talking but we would always randomly catch up for hours on the phone. We were great friends, and to be fair, I’ll admit there was an attraction there between us. Sort of an unsaid thing that was there for a long time.

But over time, the friendship faded, and he changed. Or perhaps he was always this way, and I didn’t realize it?

Once he went to college, he got into hard drugs, emotionally and physically abusive relationships, unhealthy alcohol consumption, and other things that I’m likely not aware of to this day. He dropped out of college, battled with the law, went to rehab, enrolled in college again, dropped out again… The cycle would repeat, and repeat.

I was totally heartbroken for him. My old friend who I had known for years was hurting, failing, and struggling to stay sober.

And any time he got into a fight with his girlfriend, I’d be there to answer the phone at 3 am telling him they’d work it out and stop the drugs.

When he was having a bad trip and talking about how miserable he was, I consoled him.

Visiting my parents down in Florida, I’d make a point to go and try to visit him and his family.

And when he checked into rehab, I answered the random phone number that called me on a Sunday afternoon to find his voice on the other line. I reminded him that he always had our friendship, that he was a strong man, and that he would pull through.

I was there for him because he was a good friend to me, and I was a good friend to him. We had the bond of time there between us, and I had promised I’d always be there for him as a friend no matter the circumstances. I also promised him that I would never enable his unhealthy habits and that at times drove him away from our friendship.

What I struggled with for a long time though was why couldn’t I help him. Was even being there for him helping him?

Why couldn’t I help him get out of these bad habits and shift his lifestyle so he could move past the drugs and alcohol? He always said he wanted to. Why couldn’t he see that it was all hurting him and those around him? He would say he knew he was. Why couldn’t I help him change? He said he wanted to change.

I felt like I had failed as his friend with each relapse. Which then made me feel selfish for even thinking that way. It tore me apart inside as I would try to figure out why what I was doing wasn’t making him change his behaviors. I was frustrated with myself, with him, the entire repetitive situation.

But I came to realize that I had to let go of trying to help change him. My father’s words were right. You can’t change people. People have to change themselves.

You can’t control what other people decide to do with their time or lives. All you can do is enable them to make better choices, encourage them to do the right thing, and support them on their personal journey to finding their way.

It’s frustrating, I’ll be the first one to admit that seeing the people you care for struggle is painful. All we want to do is help, console them, help them fix the problem. We want to save them, in a way.

Again though, people have to choose to make a change. They have to choose to make the choice every day to take that first step, to then practice their steps.

I can’t share in what he’s experienced because put simply, I haven’t made the same decisions he’s made in life. I’ll never be able to completely understand what he’s been through or what he might continue to go through. All I can do is continue to be the person I am, support him through our friendship, and encourage him to be the best person he chooses to be.

I don’t talk to him much anymore, and it does make me sad. But if he ever called me, I’d be there. I’ll always be there because of the bond our friendship held for so many years. I’ll be there to encourage him to be the best version of himself.

I have no idea if he’s in the same place that he was four and a half years ago. I don’t know what he’s up to or what kind of choices he makes these days. I hope and pray that they’re good ones, and that most of all he’s happy.

What I do know is that it’s his birthday next week, that he will always work incredibly hard, his music taste will forever be superior to many of those around me, and that his family loves him fiercely. I also know that one day he’ll figure it out, or perhaps he already has.

I carry this lesson of learning to let go of trying to change someone else with me because it’s a hard one to learn. I have no idea if he’d ever read this post, but I'm not writing about this for him to read it. I’m writing about this because it taught me a valuable lesson in life, and I think valuable lessons should be shared.

The simple truth is: You can only fix yourself, you can’t fix other people.

There really is no other way to put it.

That all said, and to be frank, I don’t have all the right answers. I’m still figuring out life as it is, and I will continue to challenge myself to learn more about myself and the world for the remainder of my life.

But, I hope that if you’re frustrated with someone else, that you challenge yourself to refocus your mind to focus less on what they are doing, and more on how you are feeling and reacting. Focus on how your actions are impacting the environment around you because truly that is the only thing you, yourself, can control. You can choose to walk away, stay, answer the phone, hang up the phone... all of it.

Your actions are all in your own control. Now you, my friend, get to choose what you do.