Life Coach

Life C ach Choose Happiness

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if we could always agree? That way, we’d always get along.

The problem is that we don’t.

I don’t mean we don’t always get along. I mean we don’t always agree.

Hmm…well, I guess that causes people not to get along?!

But does it have to?

Is it possible for people to get along well when they don’t see eye to eye?

Ah, “there’s the rub,” as Shakespeare would say. The challenge starts right there.

We often try to entice people, force people, coerce people, lecture, fact-bombard, or simply explain to people … and still many times they just won’t see it our way.

Frustrating?

You bet!

Yet, there often is more to life than agreeing.

Sometimes, it’s simply respecting our differences. When that’s too tough, looking deeper may help. One avenue may be realizing we have different concerns that we are addressing.

The most helpful may be recognizing that we are just made up differently – with different strengths. Then throw into that varied needs, experiences, ages, stages, vantage points, etc. And there’s a lot of frustration to go around, if we let it.

There often is more to life than agreeing.

So can we not go there?!

This does not come easily. But we cannot make progress or get along if we cannot see that sometimes we might just have to get to a place of respecting that we see things a certain way but the other person can’t, won’t, or hasn’t been able to. Therefore, there’s not much reason to think they will change. If we get there, can we calm the frustration?!

Perhaps!

We certainly can choose to continue to believe what we believe and do what we do, because it makes sense to us. However, then we need to decide if we want to keep expending energy on liv-

ing frustrated. We can ultimately realize nothing has changed the other person to date, so why go on pushing for it? You may have a strength they don’t, or they may just have a different outlook, or they may have a limitation. Either way, if they haven’t changed yet, it just may not happen. So, then, would spoiling your personal happiness be a way to go? Why drain yourself with letting their attitude and inability to change double up on draining you?

It’s simpler to write an article about this than to do it. I get it – although every time I follow my own advice, I actually do better.

In the end, we can only control ourselves.

So let’s embrace wise choices that help us live our best life. Sometimes, it takes arriving at a recognition and not staying steeped in the world’s limitations.

Rivki Rosenwald is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist working with both couples and individuals and is a certified relationship counselor. Rivki is a co-founder and creator of an effective Parent Management of Adolescent Years Program. She can be contacted at 917-705-2004 or at rivkirosenwald@gmail.com.