In 1966, the investment analyst Harry Brown for Christmas wrote a letter to his nine-year-old daughter, which still quotes. He explained to the girl that nothing in this world is even love - it is impossible to perceive as this.
Hi, honey. Now Christmas, and I have a common problem - what gift to you choose. I know you please - books, games, dresses. But I am very self.
I want to give you something that will stay with you longer than for a few days or even years.
I want to give you something that will remind you of every Christmas. And, you know, I think I chose a gift.
I will give you one simple truth that I had to absolve for many years. If you understand it now, you will hurt your life with hundreds of different ways and it will protect you from the mass of problems in the future.
So: no one should do anything.
This means that no one lives for you, my child. Because no one is you. Each person lives for himself. The only thing he can feel is his own happiness.
If you understand that no one should organize you happiness, you will be free from waiting for the impossible.
This means that no one is obliged to love you. If someone loves you - it means there is something special in you, which makes it happy. Find out that this is trying to make it stronger, and then you will love even more.
When people do something for you, it happens just because they themselves want to do it. Because in you there is something important for them - something that causes them a desire to please you.
But not at all because they should.
If your friends want to be with you, it does not happen from a sense of debt.
No one should respect you. And some people will not be kind to you. But at that moment, when you tempt that no one is obliged to do you good, and that someone can be unfaught with you, you will learn to avoid such people.
Because you should not have nothing too.
Once again: no one should do anything.
You must be the best primarily for yourself. Because if you succeed, other people want to be with you, want to give you different pieces in exchange for what you can give them. And someone does not want to be with you, and the reasons will not be at all.
If this happens - just look for other relationships. Let someone else's problem becomes yours.
At that moment, when you understand that love and respect for others need to earn, you will no longer wait for the impossible and you will not be disappointed.
Others are not required to share with you property, feelings or thoughts.
And if they do it - then only because you earned it. And then you can be proud of the love that you deserve and sincerely respect for friends.
But one can never take all this as proper. If you do it - you will lose all these people. They are not "yours right." It is necessary to achieve them and "earn" them every day.
I as a mountain from my shoulders fell, when I realized that no one should do anything.
While I thought I was due, I spent a terrible amount of effort, physical and emotional to get my own. But in fact, no one owes me a good behavior, respect, friendship, politeness or mind.
And at that moment, when I understood it, I began to get much more satisfaction from all my relationship. I focused on people who want to make those things that I need from them.
And it served me a good service - with friends, business partners, beloved, vendors and strangers.
I always remember that I can get what I need only if I would enter the world of my interlocutor.
I have to understand how he thinks he considers it important, which he wants in the end. Just so I can get something from him that I need. And only realizing a person, I can say whether I really need something from him.
Not so easy to summarize in one letter what I managed to understand for many years. But maybe if you reread this letter every Christmas, his meaning will be a little clear for you every year.
No one should do anything.