My Happiness Isn't Anyone Else's Responsibility
Why making other people responsible for how you feel keeps you miserable — and the liberating shift that changes everything.
For years, I thought that if someone upset me, then they needed to see how bad I was feeling.
It was no wonder my emotions were thrown around like a rag doll, so easily influenced by other people.
My poor husband has seen this firsthand, and honestly, he's the person in my life who copped this the most. We've been together since 2010, since I was 17 years old, and let me tell you... he's had his fair share of dramatic, guilt-tripping, unhappy Caitie moments.
In fact, in case he reads this... I am so sorry, babe.
Not only did I used to stew and wallow in all the ways he'd upset me, worse still, I made it his job to make me feel better.
Ugh.
Thankfully, somewhere amongst the many life lessons since then, I discovered the concept of being responsible for how I feel.
Boy, was that a shock to me.
You mean I don't have to make someone feel bad for their behaviour? I can just choose to feel better?
No way.
My mind was blown.
But I soon realised that I had the power to choose how I felt, and more importantly, it was no one else's responsibility but mine to make myself feel good.
Regardless of how someone treated me, behaved, or what had triggered me.
It all comes back to the lens you choose to look through.
If you're looking through the lens of someone has upset me, so they need to pay, or that people need to behave in a certain way for me to be happy, then you're never going to be happy.
But once you learn that you choose how you feel by what you're focused on, you can start deliberately focusing on the things that make you feel good.
And that's incredibly empowering.
Feeling it, then choosing again
Now, whenever my husband and I have a tiff, I feel the anger or frustration, or whatever it is, fully.
I let it move through me.
Then I focus on something that helps me feel a little better.
Not only am I way nicer to live with, but I feel empowered and in control of my own happiness.
Because what I know now is that my happiness is no one else's responsibility but mine.
And honestly...
That's one of the most empowering things I've ever learned.