The Person Who Needs to Change Is You

“A person can change.”

Frances McDormand, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Guinevere Pettigrew understands that a person can change. But unfortunately she always thinks it should be someone other than herself. In the film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, we quickly learn that Guinevere has a difficult time keeping jobs. She is known as the “Governess of Last Resort” and has been dismissed from many positions as a nanny. The problem? Guinevere always finds fault with her employers and thinks that they should change to please her.

After all, she’s the daughter of a clergyman. If her employer drinks a bit too much, she isn’t going to tolerate such behavior. She’s going to do her best to change her employer, to reform him or her—until they tire of her prudish righteousness and give her the sack.

Certainly I can empathize with poor Miss Pettigrew. I was raised with high religion and an extremely unhealthy dose of self-righteousness. And in the past I wanted to reform most everyone, too. I used highbrow tactics, judged people and persecuted them with my words; all as a hopelessly tiresome means of trying to manipulate them into being what I wanted them to be. And I usually got the sack, too. Not from jobs but from relationships.

No one is required to be what we want them to be. We are all required to be who we are and nothing more. Period. End of discussion.

So if we feel a deep inner desire for a person to change, we need to become aware that the person who needs to change isn’t anyone around us. We are the person who needs to change. That inner desire is all about us—and no one else. It means we have to go inside and we have to do some soul-searching to determine what a particular person has triggered inside of us.

If I am feeling jealous around someone, it’s not that particular person who has the problem and they are not the one who has to change. I’m the one with the jealousy problem. It’s all about me. I’m the one who has to change. If I’m feeling jealous, it’s probably rooted in a poor self-love and thus my own lack of self-worth. Add to the brew the fact that I am now comparing my supposedly unworthy self with someone I see as very worthy and I have a potion for internal misery. And I am choosing to poison myself by drinking it. In effect, I’ve concocted a prescription for my own unhappiness.

Next time you feel the desire to change someone, remember this: Yes, a person can change, but that person has to be you. And once you decide to change for the better, you will see that everyone and everything around you fits perfectly into their natural flow within the universe—including you.