“Don’t judge others.  Strict with yourself, understanding to others.  Be open to the idea that people are going to be fools or jerks or unreliable or anything else.  Let them be.  That’s their business.  That’s not inside your control.  Be disciplined with yourself, your reactions.  If someone acts ridiculous, let them.  If you’re acting ridiculous catch the problem, stop it, and work on preventing it from happening in the future.  What you do is in your control.  That is your business. Be strict about it.  Leave other people to themselves.  You have enough to worry about,” Marcus Aurelius/additional author unknown.  This is a simple lesson: let people do what they want to do, let them be who they are.  There are many annoyances in this world, I don’t pretend that they don’t exist or that I don’t wish people would behave a certain way but I know that it isn’t my choice.  I wouldn’t want someone to tell me what to do so it isn’t my place to tell people how to be either. And it isn’t my place to judge who people are or how they behave.  People will be who they want to be, all we can control is ourselves. 

The more disciplined we are with ourselves the easier things become.  As we spoke about yesterday, avoidance will do nothing except cause regret and frustration in the long run.  So will seeking the quick and easy path now.  Do the hard work now and allow for the ease of aligning run the rest of the way.  When we see we are the problem, correct ourselves.  When someone else seems to be the issue, let them and work on our response.  The truth is what we see in others a reflection of the things we need to work on in ourselves so the things that inspire anger and frustration are the things we are angry or frustrated with in ourselves.  The question becomes what can we do to correct our perspective or the actions we take?  Are we behaving how we want to behave?  Is this what we want to do with our lives?  Our words are powerful yet they mean very little in the end because we are not the ones who determine the course or quality of someone else’s life: we can only do that for our own.  Focus on what we can control and take it one step at a time.