This all sounds pretty straight-forward until it comes to putting philosophy into practice!

A neighbor loses their job for the third time this winter.

A teen gets a speeding ticket he can’t afford to pay.

A friend gets pulled over after a few too many glasses of wine and asks you to come pick her up.

Your child gets caught cheating at school and is given a harsh consequence.

An addict becomes homeless.

Do you offer grace, or is that just enabling their bad behavior?  What’s the difference between the two? For most of us, the closer the relationship to the person, the murkier that line becomes. Let’s start with a few definitions.

The entire Christian faith is built on grace, mercy and forgiveness.
So is there really such a thing as “enabling” others?

Grace: Undeserved favor, blessing or restoration

Mercy: Offering forgiveness despite having just cause to prosecute a wrong committed. 

Helping: Assisting someone in doing something that they’re unable to do for themselves.

Enabling: Doing something for someone that could do for themselves with effort, sacrifice and determination.

Helping often involves accompanying someone and walking through things together, so they can learn how to do for themselves.  This is another place that unconditional love comes in.  Love is a verb. It takes action. Sometimes exhausted and frustrated action, because (thankfully) God never gives up on us and tells us anything is possible. Any heart can be changed. Any person can be healed and set free.  This is hardest when a person’s actions (such as abusing substances) have created mental illness, leaving them incapable of doing things that they were once able to do.  As frustrating as these times may be, we are called to love and help to the extent that is needed in order for them to regain the ability to care for themselves.

The answer is found in the sweet spot where grace and guidance intersect.

This grace is an unconditional love that shows forgiveness and mercy every time they are truly sorry and make serious attempts to change their behavior and circumstances. Sound exhausting? It is! But the eternal view is counter cultural.  (See Matthew 18:21-22.)

Jesus was the greatest example of this to ever live. He spoke the (often hard) truth in love, despite how painful it may have been for the person to hear. The conviction we feel in our soul when we‘re living out of alignment with the life God created us for is almost always humbling and uncomfortable. Jesus loved these people enough to allow them to feel discomfort then so they could experience the eternal freedom He offers to all.  And when he finished loving on each of them, He clearly stated his expectation: “go and sin no more.” (Not “Keep doing what you’re doing—there’s more forgiveness where that came from!”)

…even though, of course, there is.

Why we enable others

Few who enable others have bad intentions. In fact, the primary reason for enabling someone is to shelter them from the pain and discomfort that their own actions have brought on themselves. Furthermore, we don’t take a stand or say what needs to be lovingly said, because we don’t want them to feel angry, judged or any other negative emotion. So we shut up and answer their requests (often while hating ourselves for doing so!)

This misguided “act of love” fails to recognize that loving someone without setting healthy boundaries in order to nurture growth, responsibility, and the ability to be self-sufficient isn’t love at all. Loving means being willing to do the hard thing so someone else can step into who God created them to be, while enabling may mean we’re interfering with the lesson God is trying to teach, in order to help our loved one out of long term pain!

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” ~Hebrews 12:11

The second reason we enable others is surprisingly (and often unconsciously) out of selfish motives.

Just as we don’t want the person we care about to experience negative feelings, we don’t want to feel them either! It can be excruciating watching someone we love repeat a lesson that they haven’t yet learned despite “hitting rock bottom” several times. It’s hard on us! We don’t want to feel the anxiety that accompanies conflict and difficult conversations.  We don’t want to risk the person’s anger or damage to the relationship.

But notice, that while completely understandable, these are selfish motives. They put our own desires ahead of the needs of someone else. We allow their future to continue to be at risk, so that we can feel better now.

Unconditional love does not mean blessings without boundaries!

I’ve heard many people use the story of the Prodigal Son to validate enabling others. But notice the order of this story. The father gave his son his inheritance (blessings) before he made poor choices that caused him trouble. Then the son messed up. And finally, Dad’s forgiveness and grace came after the son became remorseful and had changed his behavior. When this irresponsible man-boy returned to his father, apologetic and wanting to change, he was met with open arms. His father never stopped loving him, but this doesn’t mean that he would have dished out money to clean up the mess he’d made. Jesus gives us undeserved rights to his inheritance too. (We’ve done nothing to deserve such a reckless love and blessings.) But not until we acknowledge our mistakes and express our intention to live in alignment with His heart.  True-we’re not perfect from that point on. But He knows our hearts and intentions. He corrects us when we go astray and doesn’t allow less from us than He knows we’re capable of. 

So that sweet spot of grace and guidance? It’s love and grace.

Not either/or.

It’s both/and.

Grace and guidance…without enabling bad behavior.

Because that one thing that helps separate enabling from grace is whether the person has stopped the behavior and is making a heartfelt effort to improve.

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The post Grace or Enabling? (The 1 Thing That Makes all the Difference) appeared first on Rise Coaching.

Humans are funny creatures. We spend the majority of time trying to change things that are out of our control. The truth is, if we look at all the things we can control, they boil down to just three! My thoughts, my feelings, and my actions (which includes my reactions and inaction). Everything else falls within the outer circle-the area that is out of my control. 

A third area exists though, which is rarely talked about.  It’s what I refer to as the Circle of Influence.  This is a bit of a gray area because it includes things I can control (such as our language, tone & volume of voice, and body language), which may or may not influence things that are outside of our control.  The fact that it may or may not influence our circumstance makes it still out of our control.  This seems like a pretty basic concept.  So why does it give us so much trouble?

Let’s apply it to what we know: Circumstances do not cause our feelings; our thoughts about our circumstances do.  We know this to be true because two different people can experience the same circumstance and have completely different reactions to them -based on their thoughts.  Understanding this concept is incredibly liberating.  Consider the alternative.  If circumstances really do create our feelings, we’re up a creek without a paddle! The only hope we would have of feeling better would be by changing the circumstance.  (Which I’m guessing you’ve already tried without success. If you could control your circumstance, you wouldn’t be struggling so hard!)

This brings BOTH freedom and responsibility
My favorite moment both as a therapist and life coach is the moment that clients “get it”.  That second that this makes sense to them, and they fully understand what it means.  Their faces open. Their eyes widen. Their head drops back slightly and their face lights up.  They suddenly feel empowered. They’re no longer at the mercy of other people’s actions. ..And then, the other half of the reality sets in.  Their expression reverses as they realize this also means they are responsible for how they feel, through how they choose to think about circumstances.  Note that responsible does not  mean at fault.So what then, of this circle of influence? If it’s not my words or actions (these are circumstances) that cause someone else to feel something, but rather, their thoughts about my words/actions that cause their feelings, then what does this mean on a moral level? 

Once we understand this truth, people apply it in one of three ways:

1. They under-emphasize their influence in order to absolve themselves of responsibility.

When this information is abused, people could use it as a way to manipulate others, falsely exonerating themselves of any guilt or responsibility for their actions. In it’s most evil sense, a person uses this logic to say, “I can do whatever I want. You choose if it hurts you or not. That’s on you; not me.” This could, in deed, be the making of narcissism.

When I first learned these concepts that I teach today, I struggled with the morality behind how it could be misused. And then,
while working with a survivor of spiritual abuse, I realized that even the Bible itself has been twisted and used by people to manipulate others and benefit the self. God has given us free will to choose good or evil. Just because something could be used for evil does not mean it was not created for good.

2. They over-emphasize influence as an attempt to gain control.

This is the opposite, but not necessarily to the extreme.  In this case, we give our “influence” too much weight, accepting more responsibility than is ours to bear.  Our daughter made the unfortunate mistake of egging someone’s house with a friend when in middle school.  By having her apologize to the home owner and spend a Saturday scrubbing his siding, we attempted to influence her future behavior.  (It worked!)  There’s nothing wrong with using our influence in this manner, but we have to remember that influence is still not control.  She may have decided it was worth the extra day’s work to look cool to her friends!

3. They accept the balance of freedom and responsibility

When we understand how God created humans and human functioning and that God is love, we find a balance between freedom & responsibility.  When we recognize that it’s our thoughts that create our feelings (which then drive our actions), we can comprehend why He said we’re to take every thought captive and be transformed by the renewing of our minds instead of transforming to the ways of this world.  the fact that other people’s thoughts create their feelings is not free reign to wield our words carelessly. 
 
If I have a family member who ridicules herself harshly and is highly sensitive, I can assume with reasonable certainty that scolding her for gossiping would likely be met with self deprecation.  Does this mean I have to listen to her gossip, or join her in it, for fear of upsetting her?  We are all responsible for how we choose to think and feel. AND we are all responsible for our actions.  If I live in balance of these two, I will handle the situation in the most gentle and kindest way possible, and then allow her to own how she chooses to think about the interaction.  Freedom and responsibility.  Thankfully, we get them both.

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Imagine my 5 year-old son steals a candy bar while on a kindergarten field trip I’m chaperoning.  I see it & remove the candy from his backpack without him knowing.  I leave it in the store, and begin creating a plan to teach him a lesson and hold him accountable at the same time.  I hatch the perfect plan.  I know my son well, and am confident that my plan will work in a way that has his best interest at heart and will impact his future decision to never steal again.  He returns to school to finish his school day and I head home to prepare for when he’ll arrive a few hours later.  But there’s a hitch in my plan.  I don’t realize that my neighbor was in the store & witnessed him stealing, but did not see me there.  And when she sees him step off the school bus, she angrily goes out to meet him, yells at him for stealing, and spanks him.  I am furious with her.  It wasn’t her place to punish my son.  I am his parent.  I know his heart.  I know exactly what he needs & how he learns best.  I had a plan that was much better.  It was creative and perfect.  I saw what had happened.  I wasn’t fooled.  It was none of her business. This was between my son & I. She could argue, “But he stole! Stealing is wrong! It looked like he got away with it.”She could say that stealing is against the law, but more importantly, God says it’s a sin.  These things are all true, and none of her business. This story might seem far-fetched, but we play the role of the neighbor every day, when we judge someone else:  How they think, feel, or (most often) act.  We justify our thoughts and feelings with our morals.  While we may not tell them what they “ought” to do, we think it plenty, and might even gossip to others.  But this doesn’t change the circumstance.  It doesn’t change the other person. We can’t control the thoughts, feelings, or actions of others. But judging them will make us angry, frustrated, and bitter.

So why not choose thoughts that bring about love, empathy and compassion instead? God is their parent.He knows their heart.He knows exactly what they need.His plan is much better.He is incredibly creative at discipline.He sees all. Nothing gets by him. He isn’t fooled.He won’t give up on them.He’ll see the lesson through until it’s learned.It’s none of my business.I’m so glad we have a God who parents us each individually, based on who we are, how we learn best, and our hearts. Aren’t you?

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The post When People “Do Wrong” appeared first on Rise Coaching.

With time, the “ink” of these thoughts darkened in print every time they were reviewed in our mind.  We go back to bold & highlight as our morals & opinions grow stronger.  “She should appreciate it when I do something for her.” “He should be faithful.” We a manual for everyone who plays a role in our life: friend, sibling, neighbor, boyfriend, boss, parent, husband, mother-in-law, child, teen, co-worker… Manuals for everyone!  Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? 

Difference between manuals and expectations
There are two specific relationships which warrant having expectations (and consequences): your minor children and your employees.  However, even with these two groups, your expectations of them are not for the purpose of controlling your emotions.  If an employee shows up 15 minutes late daily, I can tell her the arrangement isn’t working for my business and I’ll need to let her go if she isn’t on time.  Regardless of her behavior (the circumstance) I am responsible for my thoughts about it (and therefore my feelings and reactions to it as well).  If she continues coming in late, I can terminate her employment without feeling guilt or anger.  I create rules for my teen for her protection, not so I can avoid feeling fearful, angry, stressed, etc.  It allows me to “show up” from a much cleaner place.

The Problems With Manuals

They Create Suffering
Expectations in and of themselves are not “bad”.  The problem is that because we can’t control others, our expectations of them (which are thoughts) often cause us emotional suffering.  Humans can do anything they want.  Of course, they also get to handle whatever consequences follow their actions.  It’s not our job to control what others think, feel or do.  We can only control our reactions to them.

Playing God
Some of the instructions we’ve written for others seem like common sense, and very little to expect of others.  But these are our thoughts.  Thoughts, which they may not share, and values they may not have been taught or don’t hold.    One reason why Christians in particular struggle with manuals, is because of our desire for others to benefit from the ultimate manual.  When we think the thought “That’s wrong” (because of what’s in scripture), we bring on negative emotions for ourselves, and we have no positive impact on the other person.  We are, in fact, stepping into a role that isn’t ours.  God clearly has expectations of us, but he doesn’t have a “manual,” because He doesn’t need us to make him feel anything.  He’s in control of it all!  I can’t begin to know why another person is thinking, feeling or acting in a particular way.  God does and is working a plan in that person’s life that’s for good.  Remember, “Nothing has gone wrong here; God’s perfectly in control.”

An unexpected benefit I’ve found in doing this work

is that as I learn to allow others to have their own experience,

without letting it affect me, I also learn grace.

Unsolicited Instruction
Imagine stopping at a friend’s yard sale, excited to see what treasures you can find.  (She’s known for her awesome taste.)  While browsing the boxes, you’re appalled to see the manual you have painstakingly written for her -outlining your friendship.  Even more offensive is the fact that the binding is completely unbroken. She never even cracked the cover open!  She didn’t mean to be rude-she just found it unnecessary.  After all, she has her own carefully-crafted manual.  Here’s a thought from my  manual: “It’s not nice to should all over people.”  

Application
(Get out your red pens!) Now that you’re aware of all these manuals cluttering your mind & spirit, here are some steps for de-cluttering those bookshelves!

1. Pick one relationship that you’re struggling with.
2. Grab a sheet of paper and write the table of contents so to speak.  Just a bullet-point list of all the “shoulds” you hold for them.
3. Pick one that brings up the most emotion and coach yourself on it.
4. Edit and shred as you see fit.

It can be tough to see all the unnecessary stress we’ve carried holding all these manuals over the years.  And quite freeing to get rid of them once and for all.  Happy cleaning, friends.  Pitch and toss freely, knowing they will never be read.  (Oh-and don’t send them to Goodwill.  No one wants to buy them!)

Not sure how to apply this to your own life?  Why not schedule a consultation call with me to see how we’d do this work together?  Schedule it now. It’s completely free.

The post Manuals (Our Attempt to Control Others) appeared first on Rise Coaching.