{"id":2401,"date":"2009-03-04T12:19:18","date_gmt":"2009-03-04T16:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifewithhappiness.com\/?p=717"},"modified":"2018-10-02T13:36:55","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T17:36:55","slug":"change-starts-with-you-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theexecutivehappinesscoach.com\/2009\/03\/change-starts-with-you-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Change Starts With You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being stupid, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8220;<\/strong><br \/>\n~Raskilnikov, in the play <em>Crime and Punishment<\/em><br \/>\nIsn&#8217;t that just the greatest quote?\u00a0 Raskilnikov utters this line near the end of the play, shortly before he breaks down and confesses his crime.<br \/>\nHe holds a theory that some men are &#8220;extraordinary&#8221; and are thus exempt from laws (like murder) when they can show how an act of evil can be justified if, in the end, a greater good is made possible. He has a few problems, however, convincing people that his murder of an evil woman is balanced out by the prevention of her future cruelty to others.<br \/>\nHe utters the above line as he realizes that time has run out on him &#8212; no one&#8217;s going to buy his justification&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"color: #800080\"><strong>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Imagine me sitting in a darkened theater at the moment this line is uttered, suddenly startled into looking frantically for a pen to capture the quote before I lose it. \u00a0 The line perfectly captures the essence of coaching, of my work in happiness, and my belief that I am the only person who can create my world.<br \/>\nLook at that line again.\u00a0 Now, substitute for the word &#8220;stupid&#8221; just about any human trait you find irritating, and notice how true it is:<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>IRRESPONSIBLE<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>MISERABLE<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>GREEDY<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>UNREASONABLE<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>UNCOMMUNICATIVE<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>CONTROLLING<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>If you start waiting for other people to stop being <\/em>MEAN TO ME<em>, it will take too long.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\nSee where I&#8217;m going, here?\u00a0 It all comes back to you.\u00a0 People are going to be who and how they are, and there&#8217;s nothing you can do to stop them from being how they are.\u00a0 So if other people&#8217;s behavior galls you, you have only two choices:<br \/>\n1. Let it eat away at you until you become a victim, OR<br \/>\n2. Take responsibility for, and shift, how you react to other people.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m not giving anything away to remind you that, in the end, Raskilnikov turns himself in and thus finds peace within himself: he knows that by serving time for his crime, he&#8217;s doing the right thing. \u00a0 He found the courage in himself to change how he responded to the world.<br \/>\nIn a similar way you have the choice, every day, to hold onto your current beliefs, or not.\u00a0 To justify your own actions and behaviors and always be RIGHT in every conversation, or to let go and let others be heard.\u00a0 You have the choice to be in anger about other people&#8217;s &#8220;stupidity,&#8221; or accept that they are who they are, and move on.<br \/>\nChange starts with you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><span style=\"color: #800080\">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By the way, if you&#8217;ve never finished Crime and Punishment because it was just too long and too dense, know that this adaptation, written by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus, does a magnificent job of reducing the story to just 90 minutes.\u00a0 The play honors Dostoyevsky&#8217;s dark, brooding view of the world thru his existentialist lens, yet strips out a lot of the complications and multiple plotlines to bring the book&#8217;s primary struggle to life on the stage.<br \/>\nIf you&#8217;re in Cleveland, note that <em>Crime and Punishment <\/em>will continue to run thru March 22 at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/onstage\/index.ssf\/2009\/02\/cleveland_play_house_presents.html\" target=\"_blank\">Drury Theater at Cleveland Playhouse<\/a>.\u00a0 According to a coupon in the playbill, if you mention that a FRIEND told you about it, you&#8217;ll get $10 off the ticket price.\u00a0 We sat in the balcony and had a fabulous view of the stage in this intimate theatre &#8212; a real gem!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;If you start waiting for other people to stop being stupid, it will take too long.&#8220; ~Raskilnikov, in the play Crime and Punishment Isn&#8217;t that just the greatest quote?\u00a0 Raskilnikov utters this line near the end of the play, shortly before he breaks down and confesses his crime. He holds a theory that some men &#8230; <a title=\"Change Starts With You\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/theexecutivehappinesscoach.com\/2009\/03\/change-starts-with-you-2\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Change Starts With You\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,40,50],"tags":[213,214,70,43],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Change Starts With You - The Executive Happiness Coach\u00ae<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/theexecutivehappinesscoach.com\/2009\/03\/change-starts-with-you-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Change Starts With You - The Executive Happiness Coach\u00ae\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;If you start waiting for other people to stop being stupid, it will take too long.&#8220; ~Raskilnikov, in the play Crime and Punishment Isn&#8217;t that just the greatest quote?\u00a0 Raskilnikov utters this line near the end of the play, shortly before he breaks down and confesses his crime. 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