Different Drummers

“If you feel compelled to change me, then you don’t truly like me.  So please take my leave so I may rest in the company of those who do.”

Anonymous

Please Don’t Tell Me How I Ought to Be  

No doubt we’ve each felt the sting of disapproval for doing nothing more than simply being who we are.  Does anyone take kindly to unsolicited guidance about how they ought to be?

No, of course not.  Because if acceptance is contingent, then it’s not acceptance at all; it’s actually a rejection of who we are as a person.  

Citing my own experience, over the years it’s been variously suggested to me by well-meaning individuals that I should be, among other things, more talkative, more emotive, more affectionate, more spontaneous, and more sociable.

But here’s the thing.  They may as well have suggested that I be taller, because I can’t do that either!  

In truth, I am none of those things.  Nor have I ever felt the slightest desire, or need, to be so. 

Simply put, they are not who I am, this a personality forged by my unique combination of biology, environment, and life experiences, the very same factors that forge everyone’s unique personality.

“… the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.”

Anne Lamott, American writer

Change is an Inside Job

So, change has to come from within, not from without. 

This is why it’s so futile (and more than a little maddening!) that we humans so oft times feel compelled to try to change each other into our own image.  

At the end of the day, what we all yearn for is simply to be accepted for who we are – warts and all.  

In this regard, I’ll leave you to ponder these words from the late psychologist, Dr. David Kiersey:

If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if my beliefs are different from yours, at least pause before you set out to correct them.

Or if my emotion seems less or more intense than yours, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel other than I do.

Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you.

If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself to the possibility that someday these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear as right – for me.

To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness.

And one day, perhaps, in trying to understand me, you might come to prize my differences and, far from seeking to change me, might preserve and even cherish those differences.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, your colleague. But whatever our relation, this I know:  You and I are fundamentally different, and both of us have to march to our own drummer.

From Dr. Kiersey’s book, “Please Understand Me“

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life