Excuse #3: “I Can’t Do Anything!”

• February 6, 2008
• Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
• no comments

Do you feel hopeless and unable to change the outcome of your relationship? Then excuse #3 may be the thought that is running through your mind: “I want to do something, but there isn’t anything I can do.”

Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.” In other words, part of the issue is the mindset we enter a problem with. No doubt, you have tried to improve things in the past, and perhaps found no success.

But I would contend that a lack of success in the past does not predict a lack of success in the future. . . unless you just do the same thing you were doing before!

Another quote I love is from Albert Einstein. He wrote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Think about that — if you are thinking and acting in the same way you were when the relationship was deteriorating, then that thinking is not going to change the outcome. You end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy: same thinking equals failed relationship.

The point of getting outside help is getting a shift in thinking. When you see things differently, then you will have new tools with which to fix the relationship. It is like going into a home project with only a hammer and nails. Sometimes, you need a screwdriver and screws, or maybe even a saw.

Whenever you gain new tools, you gain new capacities for changing. Whenever you discover new understandings, you discover new possibilities for change. I was an amateur magician in my childhood. I remember having bought this really great magic trick at the magic shop. Little did I know that it actually required a bit of sleight-of-hand (I was hoping for the self-working!).

In the car, I discovered I COULD NOT do this trick. But I kept working at it. Then, I suddenly realized what I needed to do. The instructions had been there all along, but in an instant, they made sense! I could suddenly do the magic trick!

Now, I am not suggesting that your marital problems are as simple as a magic trick, but I have been in the field long enough to know that the problems are more basic and simple to solve than most people wish to believe.

Your task is to quit playing the victim excuse, “I can’t do anything,” in your head, and find some new ways of thinking and some new tools to work on your marriage. I invite you to try my ebook as a way to to this. You can grab it by CLICKING HERE.

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