The other day I heard spiritual teacher Esther Hicks say that feeling compelled to offer advice that someone did not solicit from us is a sign of our own imbalance. While I certainly know that sticking our noses into other people’s business is bad manners, I never thought that doing this out of love and concern for people close to us was an indication of our own issues! Little by little Hicks’ point became clear, and I saw how inserting ourselves into a situation to offer advice when it was not explicitly or even implicitly requested is an indicator of our over-investment in shaping someone else’s behavior for our own satisfaction.

That is a problem! It’s a problem because if like most of us you have not yet figured out a way to get people to do exactly what you want, you have a lot of disappointment in store for you! We are in sure trouble if we say we will be happy when my boss is nice to me, or my boyfriend brings me roses every weekend, or my kid gets rid of that horrible tattoo. But what about all the time in between while we are waiting for these people in our lives to make their lives match our expectations? Perhaps it will be useful for us to pause for a moment the next time we feel a burning itch to tell someone exactly how they need to live their lives.

During that pause we might serve ourselves well to consider how we can make their choices mean less to us. It seems to me that no matter what great advice we have to offer or how much sincere love we have for the recipient of our unwanted advice, the person is going to do what they want to do and we have to prepare to live with those choices. Let’s try as best as possible to not hinge our happiness on someone else needing to behave a particular way.

– Coach Andrea