I try not to judge others or myself, but I’ve notice thus far that there are a few different types of people: those who can learn and grow as a person, those that can learn but do it slowly and those who just can’t (read don’t want to) learn a life lesson or change their flaws because they just don’t care.  I have all three in my life and I’ve learned the most from the latter group – those, often angry, people who just don’t care to be anything other than what they are right now.

Life brings some serious challenges and it’s easy to be around those who want to grow from those challenges.  But the no learners, the ones who are so cocky, so confident and often so angry at life … those people are destined to remain that way their whole lives. And being around them, and trying to help those people, is a great lesson to me on how to work on myself and why I do it.

 

Recently I had an encounter with someone who has a big ego, who got very mad about a situation. My first instinct was to get defensive and angry back. But, I quickly realized that he was combative toward me not because of what I was doing but because of what he felt like as a person.  Then I realized that the only way to help the situation was to focus on my response.  To ensure that I found a way to be genuine and without defensiveness.

There are times when we will run into these “no learners” and no matter how much energy we try to put in – it will all be spit out.  And rather than judge them, I think it’s best to walk (or run) away.  But we can help no learners (and us slow learners) by allowing people come to where they need to be through time and life lessons.  And sometimes that takes a while.  It takes even longer if we enable it.

Look, I don’t always make the best choices in my life.  But even when I don’t, those people who love me are there to remind me to smile, acknowledge and make a u-turn.  But they don’t enable me.

Plus, let’s remember that sometimes we just can’t make people what we want them to be.  We can’t decide for them what we think is best. We can only choose for ourselves.

I’d like to think that I own my stuff – that I’m a slow learner … not a no learner.  But because my name is Jessica and I’m a control freak, I may have difficulty seeing the forest through the trees.  That’s when I need inspiration from all of you.

Sometimes all we can do to help other people — is continue to help ourselves.

Have a wonderful weekend!