The Hardest Truth: You Can't Change Another Person.

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Shais Taub’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

We were describing a scenario. Somebody calls me and I'm feeling like, "What do you want from me?" You know, Joe Rogan, >> right? >> I know nothing about this, [laughter] >> right? >> And they're saying, "My loved one is out of control. A child, a spouse, a a parent, and I'm saying to them, listen, this is an insane situation. Absolutely. Would you like to get your life back? Would you like to get some serenity?" And they're like, "No, no, no. I just I'm I'm hellbent on I must change this person. Okay. And in which case we're at an impass because you have free choice over your own behavior. You don't have free choice over someone else's behavior. And what you pointed out was well you know there is still stuff you could do. You can I mean we called it you could provide love and and it's actually very helpful but and I I made the point of like let's be very transparent very clear about this. Don't conflate that with trying to change them. And here's why I want to go slow because I want everyone to track this. We are so used, I'm saying we collectively, I include myself, we are so used to using kindness manipulatively, we forget that there actually can be gratuitous kindness. What is gratuitous kindness? Gratuitous kindness means not only it's unearned, but it's without an agenda. meaning to say I'm not expecting a particular result from this. I'm doing this like you said because

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1. 0:00We were describing a scenario. Somebody calls me and I'm feeling like, "What do you want…
2. 2:04an addict," and I say to them, "What would what work are you ready to do?"…
3. 4:40>> Really? >> I'm just I didn't know it until that moment. You know what I'm…
4. 6:42father of your kids. It's just not cute, >> right? >> But every time you leave,…
5. 9:14we close the book on any addiction talk, one more thing I think needs to be…
6. 11:48cuz like, you know, it just goes out in the emails. >> I changed a letter…
7. 13:52in their mind, they are doing every they're martyrs. They're doing everything. And then you're going…
8. 16:27know what he needs. [laughter] I know what he needs. He That's so Yeah. So the…
9. 18:32compassionate then it can't hurt and it'll probably help but if you do it any what…
10. 21:06exhausted that okay, I can't I can't do it. I can't I can't manip, you know,…

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