Sometimes you have to let your loved ones make their own mistakes - it’s the hardest thing

We all make mistakes in life and you know what that is totally ok. Nobody is perfect and the sooner we realise that the better. However, while we are often ok for ourselves to make mistakes, it is extremely hard to watch others make them - especially those who we really care about. This is then often where the trouble starts. We desperately feel the need to intervene - out of a motive of love to prevent the other person from harm - however in their eyes we seem controlling and they feel we don’t trust their judgement. How do you find the equilibrium therefore of stepping back and letting others decide - while at the same time supporting them in the best possible way ?

Sitting back and trusting others to make their own experiences is one of the hardest things for us to do. Especially for people like me who would like to plan and organise everything in their life to minimise risk and maximise control. We very often feel like we are superior in knowledge and life experience to have the right to intervene on the choices of others. However, it is a mistake to assume that we have this right outright. We have to earn it by earning trust from the other person. We cannot assume we can criticise or judge them outright.

While all of this sounds very logical, it starts to get tricky once emotions come into play. With emotions comes care and affection for the other person . And because we care so much, we express our cry out for love for the other person by giving them advice and forcing them to act in our favour. There is a fine line between advice and telling others simply what to do. Most people appreciate advice but not just a list of things to do . We have to give people room besides our advice to still have the feeling that they made their own choices in the end.

So what can we then do to not constantly argue with our loved ones while preventing them from making mistakes? The simple answer is we can’t. They will make mistakes, however, those mistakes hat affect us for the really big questions we have to start to act as a team with them .we can practice giving the other person space to make their own choices with smaller thing - what coffee would you like or would you like the green or blue pullover ? Those are choice with no severe consequences. If we do this, we will build up trust with the other person .

Trust is good as it will result in the phenomena that for the big choices that do affect that and have those severe consequences - like do we overwhelm us with the purchase of a house ? - we will see that the other person even wants our help and asks for it without us constantly distracting. Of course, this is the best case scenario and even if it does not happen we need to find softer ways to advice and intervene rather than dictating. The other person will come for advice - in time.

Sitting back and watching loved ones make mistakes is the hardest thing for us to do . We need to find a balance between building trust, advising and just letting mistakes happen. Practice with small decisions to be ready for that foundation of trust to be in place for that big decisions that should be made as a team .