Have you ever been around someone who always seems to complain about everyone in their life and finds something wrong with each of them? If so, have you noticed how those individuals also seem to always place the blame for the problems they have in their life on everyone else but themselves? The sad thing about all of those individuals who are like this is that they expect the world has to change before their life will get better. Ironically though, the one person that truly needs to change to make this happen is the one person they’re not complaining about or placing the blame on, and that’s themselves.
Mahatma Gandhi once summed this up quite perfectly when he said “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Unfortunately, I spent much of my entire life doing the exact opposite.
I once loved to criticize almost everyone I spent time with. It was a common thing for me to get angry about something they were doing. I’d often tell myself that my life would be so much better if they would just change certain aspects of themselves. But what I never realized is that each of those aspects I was wanting those people to change were the things I most needed to change within myself. Each of those people I was hoping would change were only being a mirror for me to take a deeper look into myself, except the reality was that I didn’t want to.
The best image I can conjure up of when someone becomes like this in their life is to think of a person crossing their arms, frowning, and pointing their finger in a disciplinary way at everyone else. The real truth in this image is that their finger needs to be pointing at only one person and that’s back at themselves. I’ve learned over the years that any anger or frustration I feel towards anyone is something I still have work to do around within myself. For years, I avoided that work though. I really just wanted the world to change to make my life feel better. But as Gandhi inferred, it really doesn’t work that way. Waiting around for the world to change only left me in a constant state of irritation and feeling let down.
I felt that way frequently in so many of my closest relationships where I kept telling myself that things would get better if only they would change “this” or “that” part of themselves. Years were shed off my life waiting around for those changes to happen with each of them. They never came though and basically I became blinded from seeing the real truth in that I wasn’t changing either. As when I really started focusing on making spiritual changes in my life, I began to grow apart from most of those relationships. That’s only because I started seeing how each of them were unhealthy for me. It’s when I started observing how those relationships were nothing more than two unhealthy people choosing to stay with each other and remain toxic. The more I worked on changing, the more I grew apart from each of them. The less I worked on changing myself, the more I became afraid to leave them and instead focused on the changes I felt they needed to do.
Thank God, this isn’t the case anymore as my levels of anger and frustration with others are so much less today. I believe that’s much in part due to all the work I’ve done within myself to change and grow spiritually. I don’t maintain relationships with people anymore who aren’t willing to put forth the effort to change. To put in more precisely, I don’t want to be around anyone anymore who constantly complains about others or blames others for their misery in life. Doing either is really just their way of shifting the focus off of the fact that they don’t want to put forth the hard work and effort it takes to change to see their world become a better place.
For all those years I didn’t want to see that truth, I lost friends because they were changing and I wasn’t. And as I said a minute ago, I also stayed in relationships that were toxic and only became more sick because of it. Even worse, I fell in addictions to deal with my stubbornness to change. It eventually became a very lonely place to be in and that’s what forced me one day to look in the mirror and say maybe I need to change.
The bottom line is this. When everyone else is gone from your life and you have no one else to complain about or place the blame on, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and glance into any mirror. It’s in there you will see the person you really are complaining about, who is most deserving of your blame. As it’s you who is the one that needs to start making some serious changes in your life. I can promise you though once you start doing so, that much healthier people will begin gravitating back into your life and you’ll also begin seeing the world around you a whole lot better too…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson