How I fixed My Relationship With My Mother
A few years ago, I sent my mother flowers for her birthday. I picked a florist carefully and made sure they would arrive on time.
When I called to wish her happy birthday, she thanked me but then added, “You may want to call the shop. The flowers they sent are already half-dying. Or maybe don’t order from them.”
I felt a familiar sting of rejection. How typical of my mother: never satisfied and always critical.
My wife Julie overheard the same call, though she didn’t seem to be bothered by my mom’s statements.
How did two people hear the same words but leave with completely different perceptions?
🫤 My Mother is Too Hard to Please
Her suggestion was simple: Do “The Work,” the practice developed by author Byron Katie. I reluctantly took out paper and pen and identified the belief driving my reaction:
“My mother is too critical and hard to please.”
Yes, that’s right. After all, I went through all the effort to ship her the flowers just in time for her birthday.
End of story.
🛞 Enter the Turnaround
One of the steps in “The Work” is called the “turnaround, which involves purposefully experimenting with alternative ways to view a challenging situation. Here how it works:
Start with the (usually negative) belief you hold about a person. (In my case: “My mother is too critical and hard to please.”)
Now, flip that belief in three ways and find evidence for it.
1. Turnaround to the Opposite: “My mother is NOT too critical and hard to please.”
Supporting evidence: She thanked me first for the flowers. She wasn’t personally criticizing me. She gave practical info and a reasonable suggestion to contact the florist.
2. Turnaround to the Other: “I am too critical and hard to please toward my mother.”
Supporting evidence: I realized I wanted a specific kind of effusive gratitude. When she didn’t respond exactly as I wanted, I judged her and dismissed her actual thanks..
3. Turnaround to the Self: “I am too critical of myself and hard to please.”
Supporting evidence: I had taken her comment as evidence of MY failure: I should have known which florist to use. My self-criticism turned a simple comment into evidence of inadequacy.
The point was not to land on one “correct” interpretation. The point was to develop a broader range of possible ways to view the same interaction, which created more freedom in how I responded next time.
These days, whenever I feel that familiar flicker of irritation, I pause and cycle through the Turnaround. (I’m happy to report that these instances are few and far between.)
Did my mother change? I’m not sure. Maybe a little. What I’m certain about is that my beliefs about her changed, and that alone improved the dynamic between us.
That experience became one of the central ideas in Beyond Belief: When you change what you believe, you change what you’re capable of seeing. And when your perception shifts, behavior follows.
In Beyond Belief, I explore how these often-unexamined assumptions influence not only our goals, but our relationships, our confidence, and our sense of possibility. If this resonates, you can preorder your copy here.
Before you move on, consider this: How many of your “relationship problems” are actually “belief” problems?
Believe,
Nir
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