"What Should I Do if My Loved Ones Won't Listen to Health Advice?"

We hear this so often from people we feel this article is appropriate. When you first learn about intelligence and anxiety and how life can be so much easier and your mind can be so much improved, or maybe you learn that something is harmful to health and see that your loved ones are doing it, there's often a strong desire to share this news with people you care about and an expectation that they will respond to the information in the same appreciative way you did. Often this is far from the response you get if you try it.

It’s hard to accept if your loved ones seem not to believe what you are suggesting might be helpful to them. Even strangers may cause you difficulties, treating their children or each other in ways that you know are harmful to intelligence. It’s not easy to listen to a crying baby being ignored, when you know what’s happening to that person’s mind.

You are probably going to encounter similar challenges to this with your families and friends, and you should be aware that it's to be expected.

If this happens to you, practise your anxiety reduction and consider the following when you feel calm:

What are people really saying when they ask this question? Generally, they are saying something like: "My family’s behavior is causing me anxiety," or "The problems in my life are my family’s fault” or "My family/partner/friends need to change for me to feel okay." As long as you believe any of these statements, then you will be focused on your loved ones’ issues rather than on your own issues. In fact, focusing on your family or friends’ behavior rather than on your own is a way of avoiding responsibility for your own development, feelings and needs. It can be anxiety's excuse to stop you improving yourself by drawing your attention to other people.

You’ll probably have some friends or family who do take you seriously and do benefit from what you’ve learned, who actually adopt things you suggest, and have had improvements in their health. Some will believe you, and some will not. You may feel the tendency to ‘preach’ to people you care about and explain things to them. But it's just spamming someone if they’re not interested. People have to be self-motivated. They have to want to improve. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to influence them (and you may actually harm them.)

So, if you are having problems interacting with your loved ones or you are feeling unhappy with your family and they won't listen, then work on yourself! This is the greatest most loving gift you can give them –a sane intelligence to be around.

In developing that intelligence, you need to focus on your own thoughts and behaviors that are causing your unhappy feelings, rather on what your loved ones are doing. You need to be exploring the following questions:

• What are you thinking about that is causing you to feel unhappy?
• How are you responding to your loved ones’ behavior in ways that are making you unhappy?
• Are you reacting to others’ anxious unloving behavior with your own anxious unloving behavior, and then blaming them for your reactions instead of interacting?
• Do you have expectations of how other people should be if they really love you, and then you feel disappointed because your expectations are not met? Do you need to reevaluate your expectation of other people, which may be unrealistic?
• Are you being realistic about what people are really like? Are you expecting people to be someone they are not or don’t want to be?
• Are you making your wellbeing dependent upon other people, their behaviors or opinions?
• Are you taking responsibility for yourself and your own feelings and needs, or are you abandoning yourself in some way?

These are just some of the questions you might want to explore in NH.

If your loved ones ask for your advice, or about what you know, obviously share it with them. But if they don't, you're just going to have to leave them alone and concentrate on being a good example. Everyone has freedom of choice in life, and we must respect that, especially if we care about them.

This of course doesn't mean you should abdicate your responsibility to understand critical health information yourself. Ultimately, we are autonomous, and we don't want to forget our responsibility to ourselves. You really need good mental health yourself in order to be a good example to others of what is possible, not what is usual.

One person making a major change in their lives and intelligence can change all their relationships. If you learn to take responsibility for your own feelings and needs, and make the changes you need to make yourself happy, then you will see calmly and clearly whether or not you have viable relationships. You might be surprised to find that, when you are happy within yourself and no longer have your eyes on other people, they also change. If, in response to your happiness, your family gets more angry or distant, you might need to consider that they are not mature enough to have the highest good at heart. At this point you would either need to accept things as they are, or leave the relationships.

When each person in any relationship takes full responsibility for their own feelings and needs, they move beyond neediness and blame, and are able to share their love with each other and interact more amiably.

Getting a perspective on healthy interaction with people we care about (and with the greater ‘whole’ of humanity) depends largely on our underlying beliefs.

Some people believe that the body is much more important than the brain. Some people believe that neither is particularly important. Some people think only gods’ will matters. Some people believe science has all the answers.

Relationships are a system, with both partners participating in the system. When one partner changes the system, the whole system changes. For example, if you are insecure and so is your loved one, and you stop being insecure and start to take loving care of yourself, one of two things will happen. Either your loved one will be impressed with seeing you be happy, will gain more respect for you and start to take better care of himself or herself, or he or she will be too immature to change and will get angry and feel abandoned. Even if your loved ones initially get angry and feel abandoned, this does not mean that at some later time they won't shift and become more self-responsible. But interaction is powerful, and most of the time when one person really does take full responsibility for himself or herself, the people they are close to eventually stop being angry and start to learn to take care of themselves.

To assume that what we believe is ‘right’ and anyone else’s beliefs are ‘wrong’ is arrogant, and to try to push that on people is very rude. All that we know is that our beliefs help us to make sense of reality in our own ways. Diversity is a major tool of intelligence –if humans are diverse enough, no matter what happens, some of us will survive. If we all believe the same thing and follow the same path, we lose our diversity.

Your “family” has little to do with who you are genetically related to. Sure, your family may love you unconditionally, but it’s equally possible that they may not be mature enough to feel genuine love yet. Often your “true” family is composed of people you meet along your life : )

Your own underlying beliefs are up to you. I will respect them. I’ll also remain aware that what is “good” or “bad” for me personally may not be good or bad for you at all. Your personal life circumstances partly shape what beliefs you have formed and what things your intelligence needs. The same is true of all of us.

If I have a headache and I take codeine, the headache goes away. But 10% of the population has a genetic difference that stops codeine from working. We are all unique and none of us can assume that what works for us will work for everyone, because in reality it won’t.

In reality, what anyone else does or believes is nothing to do with anyone else; it is down to their own intelligence and how they choose to use it. I like to smoke, because I have a slight acetylcholine deficiency, and as long as I remain this healthy I have no intention of stopping until a drug is discovered that helps the deficiency with fewer side effects. It’s my choice, and nobody has a right to tell me I should or should not do anything as long as I’m not pushing it on anyone else.

The only tools we need for interaction are love and respect and a trust in intelligence. Many people don’t find mental health or physical health important; they may find sport or music much more important. Mozart certainly did. As an alcoholic, he produced more wonderful music than I will ever produce that has improved the health of millions more than I may ever be able to. His lifestyle and choices were his, and if folks had hassled him to stop drinking we may have had a suicide and no music.

I trust intelligence itself to ‘wake up’ those who have potential to be more than they currently are and guide their search for the information to do so. The information is here; it’s much easier to find than when my own search was beginning. If their ‘waking up’ is to be done through me, through my behaviour, words or interactions, I trust intelligence will give me the right words to say and the right interactions to make, all I have to do is remain non-anxious and it will work through me. We have to stop trying to ‘work out’ what to do or say to help others and allow intelligence to do all the work. Replace intellectual intentions with intelligent intent. To do that, all we have to do is remain a “fit vessel” for intelligence to work through. That means concentrating on keeping ourselves anxiety-free, honest, loving and kind.

Being fearless enough to be honest is a difficult thing at first. We are so used to worrying about what other people will think or do that it’s a hard addiction to drop out of. But all we have to do is get ourselves into the right headspace and it all happens automatically. There will be failures with some people –these are to teach us to fine-tune interaction, and the important thing is not to become anxious about failures but to trust that intelligence will mend any mishaps without our interference. I’ll be setting out all this in great detail during future tutorials as soon as time permits.

The gist of it is learning that your intellect is not your intelligence, and stopping trying to use intellect alone to solve problems. This can’t be explained by intellect! : ) It is something you have to ‘get a feel for’ just as if you were busking a song with other musicians by playing along and ‘getting the hang of it’ without intellect needing to read the sheet music score. It’s that sort of ability.

As an intelligent person I feel I have two contributions to make –one is to make information about the mind and about intelligence available free to all who seek it. The other is to live my life as best as I can as an example of intelligence, and these behaviors alone inspire people to start thinking –and they start to ask you stuff, confide in you about their problems and get interested in “why you are what you’re like” (excuse grammar, but you know what I mean.) When people see an anxiety-free example, they are attracted to know more unless they are too afraid. When people see smiling faces, they smile. That’s neurohacking! When people see a happy relaxed person, they start to feel less anxious –that’s helping them. The best way to help others is to help yourself as much as you can; stop focusing on them and focus on the intelligence that’s trying to work through you. I know that sounds a bit cosmic : ) but in reality it’s science.

Coercion is a bad habit! Pushing information on people makes them anxious and so turns them away from a healthy path, and if we truly care about anyone the first thing we must do is respect their freedom. Most people value and talk about beliefs, opinions and problems. We value facts, experiences and ideas. It’s a very different mindset; as different as that of a child or an adult towards sexuality. Until a certain level of maturity is reached, people aren’t really going to understand sexuality, and the same is true of intelligence.

We are not here to preach or to deliberately contrive to change others –this is arrogance; assuming “we know best”. We don’t. All we know is what makes sense to us personally and how to use that information to improve ourselves. We are not schoolteachers or politicians, trying to control others. We are loving beings, and if we love people, we must respect deeply their freedom to choose what they put into their minds, and let go of any intention to control it.