After I posted my article, Leave People to Their Beliefs, a few people asked me how to handle family and friends who don’t believe in or understand their belief in spirit guides, psychic abilities, and the afterlife.
The best way to handle these “muggles” (which is a term from Harry Potter which refers to people who are not part of the wizarding world) is to leave them alone.
It’s not your job to try to convince another person that your beliefs are the one and only true beliefs. That path leads to frustration, anger and possibly the end of friendships.
When I became a professional intuitive in 2006 there was an immediate backlash against me. A lot of people I knew thought psychics were frauds, criminals, and charlatans, and concluded I must be as well.
For a short while I tried to defend myself to these people, explaining how psychic abilities worked, explaining I wasn’t ripping people off, and trying to give them evidence and proof of psychic phenomenon.
But they didn’t care, they weren’t swayed, they had a set of beliefs they carried that were just as strong and dear to them as the ones I carried myself. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” I parted ways permanently with those who were disrespectful and mean to me.
Instead, I focused all my attention on helping those who wanted help, and teaching those who had sincere questions, and then training others to become professional intuitives. I was a lot happier when I focused on these folks instead, and my work was a lot more effective in expanding awareness and understanding of psychic phenomenon.
One of my colleagues, another intuitive, took the opposite approach. She publicly challenged all skeptics to test her. She was determined to force people to believe. This backfired on her hard as she was publicly attacked, set up by miscreants who fed her false information to test her, who then used their experience with her to castigate and publicly humiliate her. She had no chance to defend herself in their forum.
The bottom line is you don’t have to hit people over the head with your beliefs. It’s not necessary for everyone on the planet to believe what you believe. Would you want someone to constantly proselytize their beliefs at you when you don’t share them?
When I’m filling out paperwork in a doctor’s office or if someone asks me what I do for a living, sometimes I say I’m a writer and sometimes I say I’m an intuitive counselor. I can discern who will be open to “intuitive Erin” and who won’t.
So if you’re dealing with close family, friends, or co-workers who aren’t into this “psychic mumbo-jumbo,” leave them be. The world still spins and their lives still work no matter what beliefs they carry.
