This latest “Deep
Thort” article is inspired by recent events that reminded me of just how many “difficult
people” we have in the world and the trouble they can cause the rest of
us. People like Vladimir Putin who
delights in causing mayhem for western democracies and then takes even more
pleasure from flatly denying it has anything to do with him. Boris Johnson blusters on regardless of
collateral damage and as for Donald Trump, well “you cannot be serious”. Alarmingly it looks like he is.
We all encounter difficult
people from time to time. These are the
people who can make our lives, work and everything more difficult than it needs
to be; from mildly irritating to completely horrendous. For some of us this is just a few people who
we avoid if we possibly can, whilst for others it can mean nearly everybody
else.
The difficulty we
have in dealing with difficult people is that their behaviour usually triggers
an emotional reaction from others. “These
completely unreasonable, aggressive, downright b**t**ds who are making my life
a misery and screwing everything up.
Someone ought to do something about them. They should learn to behave better”. Whilst this is a natural reaction and
response it is not much help to us in finding an answer to the problem of “difficult
people”.
So this latest “Deep
Thort” comes from our book “The Z to A of Success – The Art of Thinking
Backwards” (https://www.z-to-a.com/) where we have a chapter on Behaviour that contains a section on “difficult
people” and poses this question.
If “difficult people" are the problem then the next question is, "for whom?" Answering this question contains the secret
of handling "difficult people" effectively.
This secret is that.
Most “difficult people" don’t see themselves as difficult at all.
It is other people who find them difficult.
So who has got the
problem? Not the "difficult people" because they see no problem and have no incentive to do anything about it; so
they don’t. So it is the rest of us that
have the problem. So the reality is they
are not the ones who are going to do anything about it – only you can. You need to make something different happen,
they don’t.
So the next time you encounter
a difficult person who is causing problems for you and those around you try controlling
your emotional reaction and accept that it is you that has the problem and
therefore only you have a reason to do anything about it. You will be pleasantly surprised by how much more
effectively you deal with situations caused by “difficult people”.
