I’ve recently developed a new sort of “mental hack” that has proved quite useful whenever I feel the urge to complain to myself about the behaviors and actions of people around me, especially people close to me.

For the longest time, I’ve had this terrible habit of getting frustrated and disappointed whenever people didn’t behave in a way that I thought they should, or that I thought was best. If I judged their behavior or actions to be “not-ideal” or just plain stupid, I’d wish in my head they would just magically act the way I wanted them to and would get highly frustrated whenever they inevitably didn’t comply with my wishes. Sometimes, I would voice these requests and wishes to people, framing it as an ask, with the best of intentions. This, unsurprisingly, never worked.

The simple act of writing this down makes it clear to me how incoherent this kind of expectation is. Trying to impose your own wishes and desires onto others is a ridiculous idea. Still, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has such unrealistic expectations, as I’ve been on the other side of this equation myself numerous times.

Funny enough, what actually helped change my unreasonable expectations was framing my self-talk in a completely different way.

Whenever I felt like someone should act in a certain way that didn’t match reality, I immediately reminded myself of the following. Let’s use John as an example:

“John is a human and that’s what he does. Just like a dog barks, a child cries and waves break on the shore, this is what John does and I can’t change him”.

This simple reminder has done wonders for me. The frustrating bit is knowing that people can change, but only if they want. That’s the tricky part. People won’t change because I want them to. No amount of pressure can do that. In fact, the more pressure I apply, the more pushback I’m likely to get. It’s like compressing a spring.

This works because the most powerful story in the world is the one you tell yourself. I can choose to tell myself any story I want. I can decide to change how I frame things, and that can magically lead to less frustration and more happiness. It’s as simple as that.

“Be strict with yourself and forgiving of others. The reverse is hell for everyone.”

Another framing that has helped me tremendously is remembering that people are mostly a product of their environment and circumstances. People don’t often choose to act in dumb or evil ways “just because” (granted, this happens, of course!). They do so because that’s what they’ve been conditioned to do. We’re animals behaving in accordance with our genetic programming and our social norms and constructs. Remember this next time you have negative feelings towards someone.