Episode 30: When Someone Else Hands You Their Manual

“Hey, I wrote this manual that lists how I need you to behave so I can be happy. Please follow it exactly. Or else I will be mad."  Sound familiar? If you’ve ever felt trapped by someone else’s expectations, this episode is for you.  We'll cover 3 ways to respond when someone hands you their manual—including the one that will bring you the most peace (hint: it’s not doing the monkey dance). Tune in to find out how to keep your sanity intact!

Links:

• Come to our Think New Thoughts Academy April Workshop to get help applying what you're learning on the podcast:
  
  April Workshop: Oops!  4 Signs your Boundary is a Manual in Disguise
  
  I'll walk you through some written exercises to help you turn your manuals into boundaries. Only members will get access to the replay and our full workshop vault, but if you come live, you can get get this class for free!
  Reserve Your Spot Here

• If you've been enjoying this podcast, could you leave me a review?
  Thanks so much!

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 30. When someone else hands you their manual.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hi, welcome back to Think New Thoughts.

I want to start by reading a podcast review that one of you left recently. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. Here it is.

I love this podcast. Emily has taught me so much that makes my life easier and better. The episode on compassion is incredible.

It opened up my eyes to see that showing compassion to myself opens the door to showing compassion for others. Emily teaches in a way that makes understanding easy and quick, and it feels like she is on this journey with me. She understands life and all the fears and doubts we have.

Every episode is amazing. Well, I don't know your name in real life, Keflavik, but I loved reading this so much. And yes, I am on this journey with you, and you are on this journey with me.

Thank you so much for being here and inspiring me to keep going. Okay, so we've been talking for the last few weeks about relationship manuals, unconditional love, and boundaries. Here's a quick recap.

Manuals are invisible rule books we make up in our own minds of what we need other people to do so we can be happy. When we're operating from a manual, we fixate on other people doing or not doing stuff so we can feel how we want to feel. I need her to stop judging me so I won't feel insecure.

I need him to stop lying to me so I won't feel frustrated. I need her to validate my opinion so I can feel respected. And I like to say manuals create misery because they're based on the false assumption that other people's actions are creating my feelings.

And so when I believe that, it hooks me into trying to manipulate or control other people as a way of regulating my own emotions. I need to get them to stop doing or start doing something. Otherwise, I'm going to be stuck feeling angry or hurt or disappointed or disrespected.

When we believe we need someone else to change in order to feel better and they refuse to change, we often end up pounding our fist on the manual, insisting that we're right and that they're wrong and that they need to bend to our will. And that's a very frustrating way to live. On the other hand, setting a boundary means choosing what you will or won't do in a situation.

Rather than focusing primarily on someone else's behavior and linking their actions to how you feel and trying to get them to change so you can feel better, setting a boundary means releasing the manual about how you want them to be and just focusing on what actions you want to take or not take. Here's what I will say or not say. Here's what I will do or not do.

Here's what I will provide or not provide. Here's how much time I will spend on this. Here's how much help I want to give or not give.

And I like to say that boundaries create joy because they are about telling the truth and they free us from feeling like we need to control other people to be happy. So ultimately, as you really commit to staying in your own model and setting boundaries and doing this work, I really do believe that boundaries will create more joy for you. But other people might not like your boundaries, especially not at first and maybe not ever.

You might feel really confident about deciding to stop doing something for someone that you truly no longer want to do. You might feel really confident about telling someone no when they ask you for something that you truly don't want to give. And so you tell the truth.

You come from a place of love and you set a boundary. And since you've heard boundaries create joy, you might expect the other person to be like, yeah, great choice. I totally understand and respect your decision.

Let's both be so happy. But guess what? They might say that. They also might not.

A lot of people don't like to be told no. They might respond to your boundary by handing you a manual that says, no, you're doing it wrong. I don't want you to tell me no.

Here on page 23 in this manual I wrote, it says this is what you're supposed to do to make me happy. And you're not doing it. So I'm mad.

You need to change so I can be happy. Pound, pound, pound my fist on the manual to try to get you to change. And then you go, wait a minute.

I thought boundaries were supposed to bring joy. This is awful. What do I do now? Well, that's a great question.

You have hundreds of options of how to respond when someone else hands you a manual. Let's talk about three basic categories of what you can choose to do next. Here's a little spoiler.

Option number one and option number two are going to drive you crazy. And option number three is what I recommend that is a lot more helpful. Option one of how you can respond is you can do the monkey dance, which is run around and try to do everything in the manual that they have for you.

And I call it the monkey dance because it can kind of feel like this. Like it starts out like, hey, I need you to eat bananas so I can be happy. And you're like, okay, man, I like bananas.

I can do that. That's not a big deal. I can, yeah, sure.

I'll eat bananas. That makes you happy. And then eventually this person's like, I need you to go, ooh, ooh, ooh, like a monkey.

So I can be happy. And you're like, hmm, okay. I don't really want to do that, but I guess I can if it makes you happy.

And then eventually this person is like, I need you to jump up and down and scratch your armpits so I can be happy. And you're like, wait a minute, what am I doing? So I call this doing the monkey dance. The monkey dance is prancing around another person trying to do what they want you to do so that they'll be happy.

And it feels like it's coming from a place of love, but really it's not honest. It's all based in the lie that your actions are creating their feelings. They believe it.

And then you choose to believe it too. When you're running around doing stuff you don't necessarily want to do, but you're kind of doing it to try to make them happy. And the thing about the monkey dance is that it works until it doesn't.

Like at some point you'll do what they ask and they still won't be happy. And then you'll be like, seriously, I turned myself into a monkey and you're still not happy. Like, yeah, no, they're not.

Because your actions don't actually create their feelings. They may have some positive thoughts when you eat a banana because that's what they wanted you to do and you're doing it. And so then they make it mean, oh, she really cares about me.

She really values me. And so sometimes they might have positive thoughts, but in the end, your actions don't create their feelings. And they could still choose to have negative thoughts about whatever actions you take.

So that's why the monkey dance is kind of exhausting because you end up running around trying to make somebody else happy by doing stuff when the real actual truth is that only their thoughts are powerful enough to make them happy. And the monkey dance is actually kind of pretending. It's kind of a lie.

It's kind of like, I don't really want to do this, but I guess I will because you want me to. And that starts to erode honesty and true connection in a relationship for both people. So that's option number one.

If someone hands you a manual and says, these are the things I need you to do so I can be happy, you can do the monkey dance and you can be like, okay, I want you to be happy. And that feels like a loving thing to do. So I'm going to do this.

Okay. Are you happy now? Are you happy now? Are you happy now? That's the monkey dance. That's one option.

I've definitely done it for different people in my life. I do not recommend this. It doesn't fill me with love.

It actually ultimately creates resentment for me when I do the monkey dance. And I don't feel like my actions actually come from a place of love. So that's why I don't recommend that.

Option number two, when someone hands you their manual, is you can throw a manual back at them and you can be like, well, they shouldn't be upset. They should respect my boundary. They shouldn't have a manual for me.

They shouldn't pound their fist on this manual. They shouldn't say that my actions create their feelings because that's a lie. They shouldn't get mad when I set a boundary, which is one of the worst things you can do, right? Because manuals create misery and their manuals creating misery for them.

That's why they're pounding their fist on it. That's why they're, you know, believing all of this stuff that they have to control you to feel better. That's creating misery for them and their model.

Their manual isn't actually a problem for you until you believe in their manual and try to do the monkey dance or until you throw a manual back at them. And you go, well, they're not supposed to do that. They shouldn't think like that.

They shouldn't feel that way about me. They should understand. They shouldn't criticize me.

They shouldn't push back when I set a boundary, right? Now you just have manuals. You don't actually have boundaries for them. You now have manuals.

And so you've jumped back into the pool of misery that manuals create. So those are two options. The third option, here's what I do recommend.

And it's that you release the manuals. Release the ones that they have for you, right? You can do that in love. So it's not like, oh, well, I know what you want me to do, but I'm not going to do it because blah, blah, blah.

It's just going inside. The truth is I don't have to do this. And my action isn't actually attached to their happiness, even though they think it is.

So that's just good to know. But I can choose if I want to do it or not. I can choose what I will do and what I won't do here.

And if I want to eat bananas, and they've asked me to eat bananas, and I feel good about doing that, and I want to show love for them in that way, I totally can. And also, if I don't want to have bananas, or if I've already had three bananas, and I have a tummy ache, if I'm going to eat another one, it's okay for me to say, you know, I choose not to do that. And I love you.

I can tell myself the truth, which is whatever action I take, I'm doing it from a place of love. That's what I can measure. That's what I know.

I don't know how the other person is going to feel. So when I release the manuals that other people have for me, I can choose to feel calm. I can choose to feel love either way.

I check in with myself and my own emotions and say, hey, am I showing up from a place of love or a place of resentment? Am I showing up from a place of anger? Or am I showing up from a place of respect? But I ultimately have agency either way. So you release the manuals that they have for you. You also release the manuals you have for them.

And when I think of releasing manuals, I have a picture in one of the workshops that I've done in my membership. And it's like this girl out in a field, and she's got her hands out and her eyes closed. And then there's just like all these pages that are just like floating around her.

And that's the image that I love to have in my mind when I think about releasing manuals. It's like, we have these books, they've got pages and pages of these unenforceable rules for how everyone else needs to be. And the joy comes when we're like, you know what? Actually, everybody needs to be however they want to be.

That's what they get to do. They get to make their own decisions of how they want to think and how they want to feel and how they want to show up. And I get to do the same.

That's what we all get to do. That is our right as human beings. We fought a war in heaven to be able to have the power to decide what we want to think, how we want to feel, how we want to show up, the results we want to create in our lives, who we want to become.

So the joy of releasing manuals is that I allow other people to do that. And I also allow myself to do that. Even if someone else has a manual for me, ultimately I get to choose what feels like who I want to be.

What feels like what God is asking me to do in this situation. So releasing the manuals that you have for another person sounds like this. They can think whatever they want to.

They can feel however they want to. They can believe that my actions create their feelings, even though I don't believe that. It's not a problem for me unless I start believing it too.

It's fine for them to have a manual for me. It's fine for them to be frustrated with me if I choose to set a boundary. They have the right to respond however they choose.

I respect their agency. They can ask me for whatever they want to ask. It's my job to decide what I will do and won't do.

And I can communicate that from a place of love, right? Because the other option is, well, I need them not to have a manual for me so that I won't feel frustrated with them, okay? Good luck. They are operating from their manual. They're going to pound their fist on it.

You're going to be operating from your manual and you're going to pound your fist on it. And you're both going to be frustrated that the other person won't bend. So the other option is, okay, it's fine.

They have a manual for me. I don't have to follow it. And I've sometimes had manuals for them and the truth is they don't have to follow those.

So this is what I recommend. Stop doing the monkey dance. Don't throw a manual back at them.

Just set the manuals down. You decide for you how you want to think, how you want to feel, who you want to be. And that's it.

This is how boundaries create joy. Because you don't have to pound your fist on the manual trying to get other people to change. And you don't have to do the monkey dance trying to get other people to stop pounding their fist on their manuals for you.

You can drive your own car and allow other people to do the same. All right. All this talk about boundaries and manuals.

I love this stuff. Next week, our monthly workshop inside the Think New Thoughts Academy is called Oops! Four Signs Your Boundary is a Manual in Disguise. In this live Zoom class, I'll help you identify the manuals you have for others that are causing frustration in your life.

And show you step by step how to turn them into real boundaries. So you can stop doing the monkey dance and stop playing manual ping pong where you're throwing your manuals back and forth to each other. I'm opening this 60-minute workshop for free to anyone who wants to join live.

Even if you're not a member of Think New Thoughts Academy. Only members will have access to the replay and our full workshop vault. But if you'd like to attend live, grab the link in the show notes and join us on April 8th.

I'd love to help you turn your manuals into boundaries. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.