You Can’t Fix People.
Everyone believes they have good intentions when it comes to giving advice. However, if we do not seek to understand a person’s heart, their fears, and the way the particular situation impacts them, we may be advising them to shift in a direction that fulfills our expectation of who or what they should be – not who they really are.
Let me explain.
We tend to mentally categorize our catalogue of experiences. The brain is incredible at sorting them into convenient boxes that allow us to recall them when the need arises.
If you are talking with someone who is battling depression you will quickly sift through your arsenal of depression knowledge and experience to draw connections. You will look for the ways this presented situation is similar to your prior knowledge and you will formulate plans or suggestions based off of what you know. It’s great to have these assets in your arsenal, but often times we forget the most important detail: This is actually a completely new situation.
Each particular situation regarding people is vastly different than any other preceding it. Each person brings a unique set of life experiences, fears, and emotions to the table. Although this situation might look ‘textbook’, it’s actually entirely new to you and the world.
So what do we do about it?
We heed Stephen Covey’s advice in the 5th habit of his book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and seek first to understand, then be understood. I’ve got another way of saying it:
Set your ego aside and love the person in front of you.
Our ‘expertise’ in advising and helping to solve the problem can actually be destructive if we do not see that person for who they really are and what they are bringing to the table. We will be advising them based on our perceptions and expectations of what and who they should be. Should might just be the most subtly condemning word in the English language. That doesn’t sound like Love to me.
As I said before: Each person brings a unique set of life experiences, fears, and emotions to the table. If we fail to recognize this we create unspoken expectations for both parties without even realizing it which often leads to disappointment.
That is because our deeper motive was not to love them through a process, it was to fix them.
Most of us wouldn’t admit that we do this. That is also because we lack the self-awareness to look beyond ourselves and our perception of the situation to release control to the only one who can facilitate change- God.
1 Corinthians 13 says “Love is patient”. Patience is: “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset”. Some synonyms for patience are: forbearing, tolerant, persistent, or self-restraint. Self restraint= Resisting the urge to do what YOU, yourSELF, your FLESH thinks is right.
It’s time to shift our approach in mentoring, coaching, and walking with people through life. Let’s start letting God be God, let’s set aside our egos, and start loving people exactly where they are. After all, God called us to love one another, not to fix people.
