No Overpowering: Key to happiness and success

Many relationships fail because one party tries to overpower another,
or demands too much. People in love tend to think that love will
conquer all and their spouses will change the bad habits after
marriage. Actually, this is not the case. There is a Chinese saying
which carries the meaning that "It is easier to reshape a mountain or
a river than a person's character."
It is not easy to change. Thus, having high expectation on changing
the spouse character will cause disappointment and unpleasantness.
It would be less painful to change ourselves and lower our expectations.
Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a prosperous country. One
day, he went for a trip to some distant areas of his country. When he
was back to his palace, he complained that his feet were very painful,
because it was the first time that he went for such a long trip, and
the road that he went through was very rough and stony. He then
ordered his people to cover every road of the entire country with
leather.
Definitely, this would need thousands of cows' skin, and would cost a
huge amount of money.
Then one of his wise servants dared himself to tell the king, "Why do
you have to spend that unnecessary amount of money? Why don't you just
cut a little piece of leather to cover your feet?"
The king was surprised, but he later agreed to his suggestion, to make
a "shoe" for himself.
There is actually a valuable lesson of life in this story: to make
this world a happy place to live, you better change yourself - your
heart; and not the world.