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Two other keys to saving your relationship with all significant others is to avoid blaming others for your own problems and to avoid “resentments”.
Someone wrote to me on an anti-immigrant blog and asked, “How am I blaming others when I simply resent people who are not supposed to be here demanding their rights”, and here was my response:
1) We all do that in weak moments, myself included--based on our own history and point of view (for example, some blame their parents, their spouses, their government, etc., or some ethnic group, or Middle Easterners, or "terrorists", in my day, the Russians).
2) You indicated …that you have a problem: "resentment" directed towards those who you believe "are not supposed to be here".
First of all resentment is bad for your whole being, including your physical, mental and spiritual self, because it is the rehashing of bad feelings over and over again (that is what "resentment" means: to re-feel over and over again) and has been proven to cause a whole range of physical and mental disorders. So this is a major problem anytime one has a "resentment" and forms beliefs or takes actions based on resentment.
3) In order to rid yourself of this problem you have to find the cause of it. You identify the cause as "people who are not supposed to be here" who "decide to get in my face about their rights"--an external cause, so in essence , as I mentioned, you are blaming others for your problem, when all problems arise from within us or from our reactions to externally perceived causes. (If you watch the movie I mentioned, "The Secret", at www.thesecret.tv, it goes into this phenomena in greater detail and helps us get in touch with both our inner problems and strengths.)
4) "Those people”, however, cannot be the cause of your problem, though they and the issues surrounding them might be the factor that brings out your own underlying "problems" -because they are not the cause of problems to me and over half of the population of this country who believe they have a right to stay here and to citizenship here. In fact, to me, "their" coming is a great bounty and benefit to my family and this country. So how can the same event cause so much good to some and so much angst to others: it has to do with what is going on inside the person viewing the event; not the event itself. (I am sure you've heard the story, which I have taught my children over and over when they said": "so and so" made me hit them or fight with them", and the parent says: "No one can make you fight or do anything. That is your choice. For instance if I come up and slap some people across the face some will hit me back, some will just recoil in shock and run away, and some will respond with love and find out why I slapped them and what is going on. So the slap did not cause the actions, something inside of each individual caused the actions.)
We all put up such “smokescreens” usually focusing on the faults of the “other” in order to avoid facing our own problems.
In our next article we will deal with resentments.
For more information on Saving Your Relationship by avoiding blaming others and resentments visit www.a1-life-skill-coaching.com.
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