DON’T TRY TO RESHAPE ANYONE, WE ARE NOT MADE OF CLAY!

“Hey! I got a quiz for you. If you can answer this, I will worship you as my Master right away.”

The excitement in the voice of my colleague, who was on the other half of the world, after just getting out of a meeting, made me laugh and I could immediately picture her mysterious, perky face at that time.

I pretended to seriously ask her, “What is it now then? So now it is all about quizzing me huh? Alright, quickly ask the question so I can answer and move on to other businesses.”

The other side bursted into laughter. The voice somehow contained a bit of satisfaction, “Haha, here you go! The question is: how to “get rid” of other people’s thoughts out of your mind and “withdraw” other people’s money into your pocket? Answer meeeeee.” The girl’s long “eeeeee” made me find it even funnier while picturing her silly face in my mind.

What two interesting questions, were they not?
At first thought, the two questions might sound simple, but they are very in-depth and should not be answered unthoughtfully. However, I only focused on the first question because the second one is simpler: It is the nature of money to circulate, as long as you work honestly, and seriously to create values for the society we will always be “paid.” Considering the amount of money we received is a big or small number, it is still depending on each person’s level of effort.

Before sharing my thoughts on the first question, I will give out a small example to help you understand the problem better.

Have you ever witnessed a professional potter doing his job in person? Or have you ever tried throwing pottery?
If so, perhaps you will be able to picture what I wrote in the following paragraphs. If not, I hope you would understand everything from imagination.

The main materials to make a magnificent porcelain artwork include clay and some inorganic or organic additives. First, the artisan will create the outline shape, then bake it at high temperature or dry it naturally in an open, cool place. Comes in last are the pattern decoration, painting, and glazing for the finished product.

The most interesting fact about creating decorative porcelain artworks is that it was never the materials or the painting process that affected those artworks the most. To create a vase, a cup, or any shape, especially objects with handles, the artisan is required to be very careful and gentle. The artisan must learn to take advantage of the turntable with his skillful hands to create solid figures. At this stage, if the hands are too stiff, and tend to apply too much pressure during the progress, the resulting artwork will be abnormally warped. However, if the artisan uses his ingenuity, skills, and patience, the final product will always have the desired shape.

Do you see that?

Even if it is just a piece of clay, when being groomed rigidly without patience and care, it can become a distorted or discarded object with no value.

Then what about humans? We are all living things, born with flesh and blood, so why do people always try to shape others according to their preferences? Why, with a non-living object, we know that we ought to use our mind, use all our ingenuity to incondite them to be more beautiful and more valuable. While with other people, we use hardness and conservatory to change them just because of our preferences.

It is the same for all relationships in this world. If you just keep wanting other people to change, satisfy your demands, and become the version that you think is good, that relationship will immediately come to a dead end and soon will be on the verge of falling apart.

Getting back to our main question, “How do you “get rid” of other people’s thoughts out of your head?” First, ask yourself, why do we always want to inject our demands, and our thoughts into people’s minds, forcing them to satisfy our expectations, even though they do not enjoy doing that at all? People – no matter how close they are to us such as our parents/children, will eventually manifest the feeling of wanting to “get rid” of your thoughts, and your demands out of their minds.

It goes the same for you too, right?

If a mother constantly forces her child to do housework and clean up the house, while not explaining why the child needs to do it, then there would be times when the child wants to avoid her mother. That is because whenever the child meets her mother, the mother would just continuously nagging, saying “Go finish your duties of doing housework!”. The child can not see or feel the mother’s love or care at all. Gradually, your child will establish a “mechanism” to automatically avoid her mother, so she would not be forced to follow unreasonable orders. Moreover, by the time the child reaches puberty and becomes a little older, she will find a way to “escape” from the place called “home” – where she was always haunted by the demands of “doing housework and obeying orders”.

Each of us will never be able to change ourselves, unless we want to, and understand that it is necessary to do so.

When you have truly understood this, you will no longer want to reshape anyone, even if your goal is to make them better. Our job is to give advice or guidance, not to interfere and reshape things according to our expectations and demands. Each person always has their unique journey of gathering experience, exactly how I used to write in the article “The messenger of your life”, that “No matter who you meet, they are the ones you need to and are destined to meet because nothing in this world happens by accident.”

On the other hand, when you think what you are doing is beneficial for the other person, yet they do not accept it, because it is not what suits them or what they need, you might get hurt and offended. Therefore, trying to understand and communicate with each other is more important than just stiffly shaping someone to match your expectations. You are only helping and accompanying people when every message you give out is correctly understood by them. If they do not follow your guidance, you will not be sad and will stop forcing people around you. That is because now you have understood that the decision belongs to them. Only then will the love and relationship become truly strong.

From my observation, many mothers and wives often have a habit of “imposing”. Sometimes, they even want to control what color of socks, what color of shirts, or what hairstyles their husbands would have when going to work. Similarly, their children are also treated somehow the same. They constantly control, guard, and chase after them just to see if their husband/children have done exactly what they want. At first, both sides will be happy because of the feeling of being loved and cared for, yet in the long run, maybe they will eventually fall into misery. That is because then, one would no longer want to listen to anything that the other was saying, what they are fond of is what the other person opposes. As a result, discord, pain, misunderstanding and even heartbreak, and hatred for each other are born. Love gradually disappeared from here.

Do not try to reshape anyone, we are not made of clay!

No matter how much we mean to others, we will never have the right to interfere with or shape the lives of others! We all have our own life and our own decisions to make and consider. Everything should just stop at orientation, guidance, and sharing experiences. Coercion and dictatorship will only make things fall apart, always keep in mind that!

Much love,
Truly Inspired