How to deal with Difficult People
Digg Story:Dealing with Difficult People
Can you recall the last time you had to deal with a negative or difficult person? Or the last time someone said something with the intention of hurting you? How did you handle it? What was the result? What can you do in the future to get through these situations with peace and grace?
No matter where we go, we will face people who are negative, people who oppose our ideas, people who piss us off or people who simply do not like us. There are 6.4 billion people out th
ere and conflict is a fact of life. This fact isn’t the cause of conflict but it is the trigger n.触发器 to our emotions and our emotions are what drive us back to our most basic survival instinct; react and attack back to defend ourselves.
In these instinctual moments, we may lose track of 失去控制、联系our higher selves and become the human animal with an urge to protect ourselves when attacked. This too is natural. However, we are the only animal blessed with intelligence and having the ability to control our responses. So how can we do that?
I regularly get asked “How do you deal with the negative comments about your articles? They are brutal野蛮的. I don’t think I could handle them.” My answer is simple, “I don’t let it bother me to begin with.” It wasn’t always this simple, and took me some time before overcoming this natural urgency to protect myself and attack back.
I know it’s not easy, if it was easy, there wouldn’t be difficult or negative people to begin with.
Why Bother Controlling Our Responses?
∙Hurting Ourselves - One of my favorite sayings is “Holding a grudge[grʌdʒ]怨恨 against someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” The only person we hurt is ourselves. When we react to negativity, we are disturbing our inner space and mentally creating pain within ourselves.
∙It’s Not About You, It’s About Them - I’ve learned that when people initiate [i'niʃieit] 开始 negativity, it is a reflection of their inner state expressed externally[eks'tə:nəli] 外表上 and you just happen to be in front of that expression. react to 结构It’s not personal, so why do we take it personally? In short: Because our ego自我 likes problems and conflict. People are often so bored and unhappy with their own lives that they want to take others down with them. There have been many times when a random person has left a purposefully hurtful comment on TSN, and regularly checked back to see if anyone else responded to their comment, waiting eagerly to respond with more negativity.
∙Battle of the Ego - When we respond impulsively [im'pʌlsiv]冲动的, it is a natural and honest response. However, is it the smart thing to do? What can be resolved by doing so?
The answer: Nothing. It does however feed our ego’s need for conflict. Have you noticed that when we fight back, it feels really satisfying in our heads? But it doesn’t feel very good in our soul? Our stomach becomes tight, and we start having violent thoughts? When we do respond irrationally [i'ræʃənli] 不合理的, it turns the conversation from a one-sided negative expression into a battle of two egos. It becomes an unnecessary and unproductive battle for Who is Right?
∙Anger Feeds Anger. Negativity Feeds Negativity. - Rarely can any good come out of reacting against someone who is in a negative state. It will only trigger anger and an additional reactive 反应性的 response from that person. If we do respond impulsively, we’ll have invested energy in the defending of ourselves and we’ll feel more psychologically compelled 强迫 to defend ourselves going forward. Have you noticed that the angrier our thoughts become, the angrier we become? It’s a negative downward spiral 螺旋.
∙Waste of Energy - Where attention goes, energy flows. What we focus on tends to expand itself. Since we can only focus on one thing at a time, energy spent on negativity is energy that could have been spent on our personal wellbeing.
∙Negativity Spreads - I’ve found that once I allow negativity in one area of my life, it starts to subtly 敏锐地 bleed into other areas as well. When we are in a negative state or holding a grudge against someone, we don’t feel very good. We carry that energy with us as we go about our day. When we don’t feel very good, we lose sight of clarity 清楚 and may react unconsciously to matters in other areas of our lives, unnecessarily.
∙Freedom of Speech - People are as entitled 有资格的 to their opinions as you are. Allow them to express how they feel and let it be. Remember that it’s all relative and a matter of perspective. What we consider positive can be perceived 认为、理解 by another as negative. When we react, it becomes me-versus-you, who is right? Some people may have a less than eloquent ['eləkwənt] 雄辩、有口才 way of expressing themselves - it may even be offensive, but they are still entitled to do so. They have the right to express their own opinions and we have the right and will power to choose our responses. We can choose peace or we can choose conflict.
You piss me off. 你气死我了。
15 Tips for Dealing with Difficult People
While I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with negativity, it is something I find myself having to actively work on. When I’m caught off guard and end up resorting to a defensive position, the result rarely turns out well.

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