“And is there anything wrong with me wanting my husband to change a bit?” “What do you mean – change”, I asked the weeping Jindřiška, who sank into a large armchair next to me. “Well, I want him to be nicer, more attentive and also to talk to me more. I want to know what the coaching can do for all that money” … I burst into laughter. “And who do you want to change – yourself or your husband?” “Well, him, I think I am fine,” she frowned at me a bit. “And if I asked your husband if he wanted to change anything about you, what would he tell me?”

Have you ever wondered what the most common disease in a relationship is? The desire to constantly change something in your partner. More people suffer from trying to change others than from any other illness. Why is that? Starting with others seems to be somewhat easier than involving oneself. When we look at others, we know immediately what we would recommend to them, what they should do and what they don’t do or possibly what they do wrong … The Bible sums it up brilliantly in the following words: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Therefore, it is always useful to look at people that annoy us, in a mirror-like way. View them as if we were looking in the mirror. Let’s ask ourselves a few questions: How does it relate to me? What exactly annoys me about him/her? What feelings does the behaviour of others arouse in me? What is it I do that makes my partner treat me like this? In other words, what do I have to change about myself so that it reflects in my relationships

Beginning with ourselves is the only approach of how to change others. Only when we have managed to move forward in a way noticeable to the people around us, will there be a chance that they will become interested in how we’ve achieved it.… Then they might also start to feel like working on themselves. So, let’s make the world a nicer place by each of us beginning with himself/herself.