Everyone is unique and different from one another, whether in in good or bad ways. There are bound to be some people whom we will find difficult to deal with, who'd trigger your emotions and make your temper fray. The next time you find yourself struggling with your emotions towards a difficult one, consider these suggestions from Beverly D. Flaxington, who is the author of 30 Days to Understanding Other People: A Daily Approach to Improving Your Relationships and Understanding Other People: The Five Secrets to Human Behavior. Here are some of the things you can do to both protect yourself from the difficult ones, and move to a stronger place when dealing with them:
1. Recognize your personal triggers
Get in touch with what pushes your buttons. Realize there are behaviors you simply don’t like.
2. Separate the behaviors from the person. Even the nicest, kindest, most approachable people can have their difficult days. Try to be objective and separate what you see in the behavior from the human being behind the behavior.
3. Use objective language – not judgmental language.
Is the person “lazy” or is he just “a person who needs downtime and rest more often”? Think about these descriptions. You always have the choice to take something that irritates and ignites your negative reaction and turn it more objective and neutral. This takes the fire out of your reaction.
4. Identify where you are difficult.
Acknowledge that being difficult is a common experience – it just manifests differently for some people. This self-reflective process can make you more compassionate and empathetic to those whom you might otherwise push away.
5. Learn to accept that you won’t like everyone, and there will always be people whom you find to be difficult.
Embrace the difficult ones where they are, and then release the negativity associated with them and focus on other people who bring you joy.
The difficult ones won’t go away, and they won’t allow you to fix them, but you can choose to manage your reactions to them differently and in doing so, you might just find your experience of them changes dramatically, too.
Category(s):Anger Management
Source material from Psychology Today
