You are the Problem

When we are unhappy about our interactions with another person, we always blame them for that. We think that they are very difficult to deal with.

It very well may be that they are hard to deal with, but I have bad news for you… You are a pain in the ass to deal with too.

In fact, I think that in a negative situation, it is safe to assume that you are the problem and you are hard to deal with.

That’s good news actually. Because when the other is to blame you can’t do anything about that. But if you are at fault you can fix everything, because you are 100% responsible for the action that you take and the words you say.

Example from my life

The reason I thought about this was because of the memory that cropped into my head.

About 3 years ago, when it was just my wife and I living in our little Newark apartment, we would often fight. I thought that she didn’t give me enough free time to do things that I wanted (at the time it was building a side project to learn programming).

To me, she was the problem. We spend our time always watching tv, too much walking, etc., etc. (I realize that when writing this I sound like a total dick. I promise you I’m not, but at the same time I kind of was, and you can see where I’m going with this.)

Now that we have a baby, and I’m working two jobs. I somehow found time to do those things. We still walk, talk, and watch movies. We have a 9-month-old baby on our hands, but I somehow find time to work on side projects (granted I am a better and more efficient programmer now, so that helps).

I realized that the problem wasn’t that she somehow robbed me of my precious time, but that I didn’t find time for it myself. I didn’t tell her that I needed certain blocks of time. I didn’t make it clear what I needed. The list can go on and on.

I now realize that I was probably very hard to deal with and she deserves all the credit in the world for putting up with me.