If you're constantly trying to change your relationships, your focus on personal development should include incorporating a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Use the tips below to understand how take-it-or-leave-it can save you time and aggravation and improve your life.
While haggling can effectively be accomplished by many people in the marketplace, if your life is filled with strategizing and managing your relationships, you can improve your life by consciously applying the take-it-or-leave-it rule to your relationships.
Look for signs that you have not adopted a take-it-or-leave-it attitude by considering how much time you spend on critiquing other people's behavior and thinking about or actually making suggestions to them about how you'd like to be treated.
Stop yourself before entertaining thoughts or strategies about how to get someone to behave in a certain way and instead think of three things you can do differently in how you behave when engaging with the person whose behavior you want to modify. For instance, instead of nagging your husband or wife to stop overeating, join a gym and invite your spouse to join you, suggest going to a movie instead of going out to dinner, or only buy healthy snacks at the grocery store.
If you find yourself getting angry at someone frequently because of a particular behavior, establish three ways you can avoid the impact on you from the behavior you're criticizing and implement those methods into your life. For instance, if you have a friend who assumes that he or she can call you any time of day, choose to turn off your phone at a certain time of day, let your answering machine pick up phone messages before answering your phone, or establish a new time of day as the only time of day you'll speak to that person.
Reserve confrontation to situations where you're willing to end the relationship. The most important part of understanding take-it-or-leave-it is that your options are limited to taking it or leaving it and that sometimes leaving it will be the right answer for you. Walking away from a relationship or situation may not feel easy, but sometimes it is the healthiest thing to do.
Don't try to avoid facing up to take-it-or-leave-it by trying to convince someone that it's in their interest to compromise because you will usually be unable to do so. For instance, if your boss pays you poorly, then your boss has placed that value on the work you perform and assumes that he or she can replace you easily. In order to address your low pay, your choice is to find other work rather than trying to negotiate higher pay.
You can stop wasting your time and energy on trying to modify relationships by learning to accept people on take-it-or-leave-it terms. Rather than trying to control things that are simply beyond your control, this technique reminds you of the one person you do have control over: yourself. Use the tips above to improve your contentment and happiness with your life.
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