The more we accept others as they are, the more likely they are to change.
How weird is that?

Watching a loved one suffer is one of the hardest things that any one of us will ever go through. It is often so much harder than dealing with our own suffering because we love them.

We can take care of ourselves, but we’re watching someone who cannot do so, who is struggling, and we can’t help them. And then their struggle and suffering become our suffering. And it just magnifies and amplifies and multiplies the suffering.

This is made even worse when the person we love is responsible for their own suffering.

When they are causing it. When they are compulsively giving in to harmful mental habits or physical habits that cause their suffering.

Similarly, when we have to watch them actively undermine or resist their own healing, we feel helpless. And yet we feel like we can do something and should do something, but we don’t know what to do.

How do we help someone who won’t help themselves?
How can we get through watching someone continue to suffer and make their suffering even worse?

The Reality We Face

I’m sure we all have a family member or a dear friend who we see harming themselves with substances or activities and behaviors.

There is so much vice and toxicity in our world that is available and legal and free, sometimes illegal, and it inevitably comes for some family member, sometimes ourselves.

And they get hooked. They get hooked into doing something that is killing them or destroying their life, destroying their peace, destroying the person that we loved and we know is inside them.

It can even be a stubborn elder, an aging parent who just doesn’t take their meds or eat the way the doctor recommended, and they’re just continuing down a painful path.

What We Can Do

In these situations, there are a few things we can do to get through it, to help them, to help ourselves, and to help the situation.

1. Protect Your Own Energy

First and foremost, we must learn to help in a way that does not drain our own energy.

We become completely useless if we fail to maintain our inner peace. We subconsciously want to give them all of our positive energy without realizing that we are depleting our own energy.

And if we deplete ourselves, the suffering isn’t eliminated. It is just transferred from them to us, and only temporarily.

So we have to always be mindful of our efforts and recharge when we need to.

2. Help Without Expectation

Second, we have to learn to offer help without expectation, because this is what drains us.

We’re giving, expecting something in return. We get drained when we have this agenda, this motive, this effort to change and transform, instead of remembering that sacred call to simply help, to alleviate suffering when we can, and to not create more of it for ourselves or others.

So we have to do it in a way where we are not draining ourselves by giving help, offering tips, sharing advice and wisdom.

We are receptive to the situation. We are aware of them. And we don’t make it about us.

We are giving because we have a surplus of joy and peace and health and well-being, and we simply want to share it. Never to give it all away.

Never to give them our power of peace and joy over ourselves, because that doesn’t help anybody. That only hurts the situation.

3. Give Pure, Unconditional Support

We will, in fact, be more effective, more helpful, when we can offer pure love with no strings attached, no expectations, no pressure, no obligations, no judgments, no timetables.

It is the only way to give without personal suffering, because we are giving without the expectation of reciprocation.

We don’t need anything in return. There is no getting let down. There is no frustration. There is no loss when we offer this kind of help with pure intentions.

Because there is no transaction happening.

And when there’s no transaction, there’s no gain, there’s no loss. There’s just a sharing of space.

4. Accept What You Cannot Control

Lastly, we must recognize that we cannot control other people, as hard as we might wish we could.

Some people will never help themselves, no matter what.

However, we can increase our chances with a few simple techniques:

• We can be positive examples
• We can give gentle reminders when they are most receptive
• We can encourage and express our love and support

When people feel supported, not pressured, miraculous change can happen, and often when we least expect it.

Accepting Reality

It would be nice if everyone would just listen, do what we said, take advice, and help themselves.

It would be nice if everyone could see the damage and harm they’re doing to themselves and their families.

But that is not this world. Maybe that’s some other world.

But we live on this one.

And on this one, we balance taking care of ourselves, taking care of others, doing the best that we can, and letting that be enough.

And then putting the results, the outcomes, into the hands of this miraculous universe, this universe that created them and you, this planet and all the stuff in it, the situation that we’re currently in.

The Paradox of Change

The more we accept others as they are, the more likely they are to change.

How weird is that?

When we become calm and peaceful and loving and accepting, other people have the chance to step into their power.

Instead of just following orders and giving their power away, they feel they are given the space to reflect and come to a wise conclusion instead of living in conflict and resistance.

It doesn’t happen right away.

Love doesn’t heal a person overnight.

But the more they see that our hopes and wishes for them come from love and non-judgment, the more they can open up to that change we so desperately hope they can make.

Creating a Safe Space

It is often more powerful when we create a space for them to be honest with us than it is for them to hide things from us, to hide their true feelings, their true thoughts, their true actions.

Because when we force them to change, to be perfect, they hide the truth and their failures.

It’s difficult to realize this.

Oftentimes, we don’t want to see the truth, and so we force them to hide it from us.

So the more we can accept the truth of reality, that we can accept imperfection in those we love and see them hurt themselves, the more they can start to see it.

Because they can put down those walls of shame and guilt and deceit.

I once knew a very wonderful person, an older gentleman, a terrific father and husband, a successful businessman.

And he struggled with weight for most of his life.

I had heard him say once that he’d rather be dead by 50 than give up his favorite foods.

And he said that in front of his family.

This is what addiction can do. This is the pain that it can cause.

And nobody wants to see that.

What We Can Still Offer

We all want that person to find joy in life in a way that is healthy and sustainable.

Sometimes they are struggling, and they have their own shame and guilt, and to add on top of it is just too much to bear for some people.

And sometimes all we can do is be a calming, positive presence in their lives.

Leave that invitation to exercise and work on a diet plan together. Leave that door always open.

But it is up to each of us to walk through that door.

Our job is to make that door as beautiful as possible, as welcoming as possible, so that one day they’ll choose to come through.

Let them know life goes on, and life is beautiful on the other side.