Tolerating Challenging People
Tolerating Challenging People: For those of you who are working on being positive, doing your best to see the best in people and in life, it can be tough to keep this up when you are around so-called challenging people.
What are challenging people? Well, to be honest, I try not to label people, but it does help me to note their behaviour. So rather than saying to myself ‘Jill is a difficult (or negative/argumentative/gossipy/untrustworthy/jealous etc) person I can say to myself ‘Jill is behaving in a difficult way today, I wonder how best I can support myself around this so I still feel good.’ This takes the judgement off of Jill and flags the behaviour, as well as seeking out solutions to feeling okay in spite of the challenge.
If you think of other people’s troublesome behaviours as a test to see how well you can handle it, it may motivate you to keep your positive focus and integrity. Complaining to others about the person rarely makes us feel any better, although we may do it to ventilate and let off steam.
In Rhonda Byrne’s book ‘The Power’ (author of ‘The Secret’) she suggests that we should think of these people as PETs, or Personal Emotional Trainers. Every challenge they present, she says, is an opportunity for you to turn away from negativity and blame and choose love. Don’t fall into the trap of judgement, guilt, fear or unworthiness. Instead turn away and look for the things you love in your life. This expands the good. Remember that there are times that we are also ‘PET’s’ for others too.
Beware of wanting to change other people too. Of course we often want others to do better, especially loved ones, spouses or children. But they have a right to be themselves and make their own choices too. A strong desire to change someone usually interferes with this right, and leaves us feeling disappointed and despondent as it seldom succeeds.
In EFT we can do proxy tapping for another person who is behaving in a difficult way. This is where you tap for someone else. Although I think that first of all it’s best to look at how we are affected by it and work with that. If we are calm and positive then other people’s behaviour is much less likely to bother us, and we are more objective.
This doesn’t mean of course that we should ignore bad behaviour that we really ought to act upon, or that we should tolerate mistreatment. Perhaps there is some action we ought to take and we can tap for this too, if we are holding back, for example to confront the person and let them know that they make you feel uncomfortable when they say/do this.
In this video I use Positive EFT, asking you to think of the feeling you get around the person who is behaving in a difficult way. Then to consider its opposite. For example, maybe you have been feeling annoyed around this person, and perhaps the opposite would be to feel happy or peaceful around this person. So for Positive EFT we tap on the positive, inviting that quality into our energy body when we think of this person.
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