“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes.”
Winne the Pooh
She has a tendency to panic. Makes it hard to trust her.
He is chronically greedy. Grew up dirt poor. Money is everything.
She is a channel of pure wisdom, a naturally gifted seer.
He is a genius, able to connect vast intellectual concepts.
She is fragile, new, and green to the concept of cause and effect.
He is angry, wounded, perpetually antagonistic.
People are where they are, despite our desire for them to be further along, more evolved, more fun, closer to our level, less intimidating, more relatable, easier to access, or simply more like us.
If you take the desire for someone to be different out of the equation, you can meet them where they are. You can meet them in the real moment. You can meet them in their despair or their magnificence.
And when you truly meet them, with no wishing for something different to wedge you apart, you’ll know what to do. You will have the compassion to be calming, the humility to be reverent, or the wisdom to walk away. The question becomes, how would you treat “wounded” or “rage” or “brilliance?” Not how would you help (or coerce or plead with) someone be more healed or less angry or more down to earth.
They are where they are. Consider the facts; spare yourself the desire for change. Remove the friction of wanting to improve them. And engage. It’s the only way change happens.
Danielle LaPorte is the outspoken creator of The Desire Map, author of The Fire Starter Sessions (Random House/Crown), co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan and soon-to-be publisher of Danielle Magazine, launching this September. An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes.
You can also find her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter @daniellelaporte.
*Featured image by Mike Baird.
