Dealing with Challenging People

One of the lessons from The Four Agreements (Toltec teachings) by Don Miguel Ruiz is this:

DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

~ Nothing others do is because of you.  What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. ~

I know, I know, easier to read and know this than to put into practice just like everything else, however being willing to remember and begin to incorporate this into the things we practice is the first step to lightening our load.  In my experience, willingness and awareness are the most important ingredients in the recipe for changing our lives.  It doesn't mean once we 'know' something that we magically are living it to perfection every single minute of every single day.  Change is a process, and our power lies in our commitment to change.  We're all trying to become better people, better than we were yesterday and that takes willingness, awareness and practice practice practice!  That's why who we see as the 'challenging' people show up in our lives, so we can PRACTICE hahaha

We humans don't learn and evolve through those happy, joy, blissful, high times and from the smooth relationships.  Those times and relationships are awesome and supportive and uplifting and we wouldn't know that if we didn't experience the opposite sometimes!  Our soul's growth depends on the challenging times and people and how we choose to 'react' to them.  It's so easy for us to stay in our old patterns, for instance when someone is attacking us with their anger it is our knee jerk reaction to retaliate with anger.  Reacting to anger with anger however, automatically puts us in a power struggle, where in the end no one wins.  Don't take it personal and don't engage are two great rules of thumb.  If we can think of these people as opportunities for us to grow, instead of a pain in the ass, we can eventually find gratitude for them.

When someone comes at me now with anger or attack energy, I no longer cower like I used to and be upset that someone is mad at me or doesn't like me, nor do I react with anger because I understand that person's emotion has nothing to do with me and everything to do with their deep rooted pain.  I choose now to not engage, but to walk away and send that person love and forgiveness from afar.  That too is often a process, as the attacking energy can be quite upsetting, especially if you're a sensitive empath, so when the attack memory surfaces again (and it will!), it's about making it a habit to surround that person in light and love, and to see that behind their anger, lazy, control, or bitch mask, they are in a lot of pain.

Maybe there's someone at work that drives you crazy.  They could be control freaks, gossips, lazy, alcoholics, unreliable, bitchy and the list goes on.  I spent 17 years working in a Territorial government office and all I know is it takes all kinds to make the world go around and I encountered all of these types!!  Back then it would have been nice to be aware of this powerful understanding but instead I was constantly reacting and found myself in power struggles all the time.  I was also a control freak and admittedly one of the challenging people!!  Ya lives and ya learns!  I can tell you this, from my experience it's easier to simply 'accept' what is, how people are and where they are in their lives rather than wish they were different so as to make your life easier.  They may never change, but YOU can!

It's especially tricky when these challengng people are part of our family, whether that's blood family or soul family, but the same applies.  We can take a deep breath and pretend we're having an out of body experience and don't take their behavior personally or we can engage in a power struggle.  We can acknowledge their pain, pray for them and know that they are big girls and boys and will hopefully figure out their 'stuff'.  We can choose to keep them in our life or to keep our distance and we don't have to 'feel bad' (I know that's a hard one for those of us with the disease to please ;-))  We all have the same help available to us from Spirit, we aren't here to be everyone's rescuer.  Rescue yourself and save yourself the struggle by remembering to practice not taking things personally and choosing to send love back .....the result is one similar to pouring water on a fire versus giving it more oxygen. :D

One of my practices now is to observe the behavior of the other person and before I react with words I might regret, I breathe, sleep on it, and look at whether this is a trigger for me to see some trait in myself that is attracting a repetitive type of person to me. If not, then I see it as a boundary issue and I try to remember their behavior is a result of their personal pain (the more difficult the person the deeper the pain).  I then vision them in a pink bubble of light and ask Creator to send extra help to them.  Sounds crazy perhaps but it's alot less stressful than how I used to do things!!  I find as I remember to practice this, that I begin to feel lighter and happier, not engaging and creating unnecessary drama.   Resentments begin to fall away too, and slowly I free myself.

Letting situations go and sending good energy their way takes less energy than engaging and creating drama, then telling everyone about your drama, and what that person did or said and keeping that negative energy alive.  Far easier to accept people are how they are, no one is perfect, many are in deep pain every day and act from a lower space as a result.  It doesn't give anyone the right to abuse us with their anger or attack energy, those are the people in the most pain but that's not ours to take on.  We have to look after ourselves by drawing a personal boundary and choosing to remove that person from our lives and love them from afar if that's what we need to do to look after us.

It's also a great idea to be aware of when we might be the difficult person and be open to looking at our own underlying pain.  At different times in our lives, we've all acted out in ways we might not be so proud of, so cut the other guy some slack and don't take it personally :D