Life's little hassles

Many of my clients constantly complain about all the hassles they have. They never seem to end. One hassle after another.

The funny is, though, when I ask them why -- what causes all those hassles -- they immediately start listing five thousand and sixty two reasons about what bothers them. What others do to them, or don't do, how people won't do what they wnat or in the way that they want, or how they just can't get their way, and on and on and on it goes.

So when I ask them, "What if you stopped having 'a way'? What if you just let people do what they did? What if you stopped expecting others to behave properly?"

As you might have guessed, many of them just can't get their heads around that idea... letting people do what they do? Stop trying to get my way? Have you lost your marbles??? It would be chaos.

Maybe so. But, I suggest, then at least you'd be happier, wouldn't you?

"But they might hurt me, do something bad!" they complain.

"Well, we have the right to defend ourselves. Besides that there really isn't any reason -- well, other than habit -- that we need to force people to do what we want ... you know, criticize, get angry, be bitchy, resentful, aloof, or whatever means of violence we choose to use to force people to do what we think we want."

Mostly people think I'm crazy to even suggest that. After all, every day they see all that sort of violence at work, in sit-coms, drama's and movies, between themselves and their spouses and children, at the mall... so of course, they think, that sort of voilence is normal -- we're supposed to behave that way. What kind of moron would do otherwise.

I raise my hand, "This kind." Then I try explaining that I'd rather be happy than getting my way.