The Only Way to Effect Change in Others

It may well be that consciously you did not get yourself into an ungainly situation, yet it is definitely you who has to get yourself out of it. Of course, in some situations, you just have to let them ride. If you have a teacher that irritates you, odds are you just have to stick it out. The semester will be over. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Meanwhile, you don’t have to be so opposed.
 
Much of the time in life, something will solve or resolve itself without help from you. Yet, sometimes, there is something you can do and have to do. In one way or another, you have to let go of a situation that is not producing happiness. By let go, I mean to let go of its hold on you. You can still be in it, yet something has relaxed. You perhaps.  
 
You may stay or have to stay in an uncomfortable situation. By now you know that other people will change themselves or not. Seldom is it within your jurisdiction to create a change in someone else. How you may wish for someone else to be different. It’s quite certain that you won’t affect a change in another unless there is a change in you. It is hard enough to change yourself especially when you don’t want to.
 
What is this will of yours? It helps you to persist, and this is a good thing, but not always. How do you know the difference between hanging on to stubbornness or whether it is determination to accomplish that which is within My Will and your capability?
 
Many great endeavors were dismissed out of hand by critics, and yet those very endeavors have been blessings to mankind. Maybe you would have liked to live in the horse and buggy days, yet now people drive their own cars and fly all over the world. Before telephones, people visited people in their homes and were more engaged. There is no stopping change in the world. Whatever your view of modern life, there will always be more and more new, and, it seems, faster and faster. Sometimes change seems to go like the speed of light!
 
Sometimes, before you turn around, someone has taken your seat, and someone has hurt your heart, and you don’t know how to get out of the dither you are in. There is the possibility of getting out of situations, and yet, sometimes, you have to work it through. You have to change within to effect an outer change. Oh, if only, people would talk it out with you. If only people didn’t think they know better than you. If only other people were not so peremptory and pushed your value aside. If only other people weren’t as they are.
 
So long as people find fault, there will be opposition. No one wants to be faulted, even when they are at fault — especially when they are at fault!
 
As best you can, do not take other people’s mistakes about you so much to your heart. You’ve heard it before that how someone else may think is their problem, not yours. You don’t have to make it yours. Remember your worth to Me, and what fools these mortals be.
 
Somehow it is your portion to not let your heart be hardened because of another’s error. I tell you frankly that if someone does not favor you, it is the other person’s error. And when you disfavor another, it is also your error. Even if you are absolutely definitely in the right, you made an error of taking another’s error to heart.
 
Never is it meant to give your heart over to error. When you compound another’s error, you have taken another’s error too much to heart. Let go of others’ errors, and you will be free of your own.