Dealing with Difficult People
The best way for dealing with difficult people is to love them. Loving people when they are opposing you gives you the perfect opportunity to practice real love. Love that is not conditional on them accepting, liking or appreciating you.
Dealing with difficult people, especially when they are outwardly judging, criticizing and / or condemning you and your lifestyle choices and whom are probably speaking badly about you to others, is normally the grounds for a very hostile and tense environment, but despite this volatile situation, it is important to keep in mind that it is absolutely possible to move beyond and away from the darker feelings fueling the situation, to a state of being where you only feel love and compassion for the other person.
To love someone who is opposing you is simply to be connected with the bigger picture of life and living and to consciously acknowledge and be aware that the other person is a human being too with their own history, life and challenges they are facing. To be compassionate for them, is not to feel pity, but rather to simply recognize them, not as someone who is challenging and opposing you, but as a friend or loved one would – to have empathy towards them. Love is the optimum state of being- a state of being that is void of any negative emotions – only acceptance and understanding.
The intention is not to stop them opposing you, but instead to help you grow as a loving human being.
At the end of the day, it is rare that we know what experiences other people have endured in their past, or what distressing and aggravating issues they are dealing with now to make them behave like they are, or to make them feel like they do about you. You can not control, nor are you responsible for their feelings or behavior, but you are responsible, and can control, how you react and deal with the situation.
Dealing with difficult people by trying to love them while they are opposing you is the ultimate act of self control and discipline, because it is easy to feel misunderstood and to believe that you are being treated unreasonably in these situations. All of us have a deep need for being liked and having a sense of belonging, so we find it distressing and upsetting when people do not like us or want us to be around, but this is why dealing with difficult people by loving them is the greatest opportunity for us to grow as human beings, to develop the self discipline not to let our lower emotions overcome and rule us, but to bring love and wisdom to the situation and do what we can not to exasperate the situation further.
Self discipline is the major differentiating factor between human beings and animals. Only human beings have the capacity for such great self discipline. The more self discipline we demonstrate in our lives, the more human we become, but if we loose ourselves to our lower emotions we become more like animals, feeding off our primitive emotions.
What is your view on this? Share your thoughts and experiences below in the comments section.
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