Unconditional love — The only power that really changes people

How many times have you been in a relationship and wanted to change the other person? Maybe it’s just a little thing you wished to be different that you believe could make a huge difference in your relationship.

I’m lifting my hand up here.

But, ultimately I have learned to recognize that my happiness doesn’t dependent on the behavior nor characteristics of the other person — Therefore them changing doesn’t make a difference in my level of happiness.

And the funny thing is that when I come from this place of acceptance and understanding, change occurs.

When I come from that place of understanding within me, change in my experience of the relationship is always guaranteed. And what many times also happens is that the other person changes.

This is because when we come from the place of unconditional love and acceptance we tend to bring out the best in other people.

Why trying to change the other person hardly ever works

When I think about the times when I have wanted to change my partner, I can see that I haven’t been very successful.

When we try to change the other person we usually come from a critical state of mind. We point the other person’s so called frailties in hope of them waking up and fixing their behavior.

Well, that hardly ever works. In the best scenario the change may occur, but it’s hardly ever lasting. This is because the thinking behind their behavior has not changed.

Instead when we come from this critical state of mind the other person easily becomes defensive and begins to resist the change. Instead of supporting them to change we innocently often end up bringing out the worst in the other person.

The state of mind where we come from matters

If we see that the other person is doing something that is not good for them nor the relationship, and want to support them to change, the state of mind where we come from matters.

If we come from the place of criticalness, pointing out the other person’s frailties instead of seeing the good in them, the other person can feel this.

When we come from the place of our ego, taking our thoughts in the moment of the other person too seriously, we tend to bring out the other person’s ego to the surface too — And when we are caught up in our egos it’s hard for us to change.

On the other hand, if we are able to come from the place of love and understanding within us, we tend to help the other person to connect more with this love and understanding within them too.

And real and lasting change always comes from this place of understanding and unconditional love.

Change that comes from within

Real change always comes from within. It’s brought to us with the power of our own insights. It’s when we first learn to see our outside world with new eyes, our outside circumstances change. It’s when the thinking behind our behavior changes, our behavior changes effortlessly.

This is how change happens inside—out.

And for us to gain these insights we want to create more space for them to come to life.

When we come from our ego, being defensive or critical we are always caught up in our thinking which makes it harder for these insights to occur. There’s simply not that much space for new thoughts to arise.

On the other hand when we come from the place of love, compassion and understanding, our mind is more quiet and we have space for these new thoughts to fill us up.

Coming from the place of compassion, love and understanding helps us to bring these qualities out from the other person too, so that they can come from the place of unconditional love and be in the best place for them to gain their own insights.

— Allowing the change to happen from within.

How to come from the place of unconditional love

Then how do we come from this place of unconditional love, so that we can support the other person in the best way possible?

— By recognizing that our own experience of the other person is coming from within us, not from them.

By recognizing that we are experiencing our own perception of the other person — not who they truly are — and therefore our happiness is not dependent on them. We can be happy whether or not the other person changes, because our happiness comes from within.

Seeing that when we see the other person as faulty, our experience is painted by our own negative thinking and coming from within us. We are not in the state of mind to see the other person for who they truly are.

Simply by recognizing this, and seeing it to be true, allows us to let go of our critical thinking and our mind to relax, so that we can become aware of that unconditional love and happiness we all have within us.

This unconditional love is always there, because it’s who we are.

Sometimes it might be covered by our negative, stressful thinking, but as soon as our thinking settles down, we are able to get a sense of it again and show up from this place of love for ourselves and for others.

The power that supports people to change

The amusing thing about change and supporting other people to change is that whenever we think that change is necessary we are least successful in allowing it to happen.

And on the other hand, when we accept the other person, just as they are, and come from the place of unconditional love we are in the best place to allow the change to occur.

Compassion, love, understanding and seeing through other people’s so called frailties to that place within them that is love, allows this unconditional love to emerge and change to happen without any effort.

Sometimes as a result the other person changes, and sometimes the result is that simply only we change — and therefore have a new experience of our relationship.

We begin to see through our limiting thinking of the other person and recognize more of their true nature and that is really the only change we need.

We begin to see that our feelings of love and happiness have nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with our own level of understanding in the moment.

The only power that creates change is unconditional love, insights. And when we begin to get a feel of this we begin to see that for our experience to change the other person doesn’t need to change, but where we self come from makes all the difference.

And as an additional result of this, when we come from this place, we tend to bring out the best in other people and create the best environment for the relationship to change too.