Difficult People!!!!!

This is a quote I use early in my seminars when I’m introducing the three parts of my “Life from the Top of the Mind” system. The first part is how to shift from the reactive brain to the purposeful brain, the second part is how to stay in this clear, confident, creative part of the brain, and the third is how to get others to shift from their resistant brain to their receptive brain so that they can hear and understand what you are wanting them to know.

I know when I say this that many people are thinking, “Bill if you can just show me how to get others to stop being so difficult, I will be happy!” While this is understandable, I let them know that focusing exclusively on changing others would put us at a disadvantage because we would be tying our peace of mind to their state of mind, which is not a good idea.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be sensitive to others, especially those that are close to us. What it does mean, however, is that we don’t want our ability to bring our best to life to be dependent on another person’s state of mind, especially if these other people are not important in our lives.

Take someone who cuts us off on the freeway, or is rude to us in a store, for example. Many people react to situations like this with anger and frustration and this is certainly understandable. However, after the initial reaction, we often feed our negative state of mind by ruminating about how wrong they were and how bad they “made us feel.” At this point, we have surrendered our peace of mind and clarity of mind to someone we don’t even know, and will probably never see again! We have made them the most important person in our life because we have given them the power to trigger stress chemicals, such as cortisol, and dominate our thinking.

Even when we do know the person, the question still is, “Do we really want to tie how we feel to their state of mind?” If they are very close to us, maybe the answer is yes… at least to the degree that our empathizing can help them feel understood and cared for. In other words, we don’t want to appear insensitive when those who are close to us are upset about something.

However, if this isn’t the case, (for example, we are dealing with some coworker or family member who is always negative and/or upset about something), maybe the best thing we could do is to decide that our state of mind (how we are thinking and feeling) is more important than trying to change them, and go about choosing who we want to be and how we want to feel in a way we would teach and/or recommend to those we love.

In this way, staying in the clear, confident, and creative part of the brain becomes our highest purpose (or the most important thing in our life) and we can actually use these situations to practice this skill. Then, because we will always get better at anything we consistently practice, eventually this ability to choose and maintain our peace of mind, regardless of the situation, will become our experience of life.

If this sounds appealing to you, I suggest you first look back to past situations where you may have unwittingly tied your peace of mind to another’s state of mind, and become clear about what you would have done differently if staying in the more purposeful part of your brain was your highest purpose. Next, I encourage you to begin to use stress (frustration, anger, annoyance, anxiety, etc.) as a signal that you are coming from the reactive part of the brain and shift from that lower brainstem to the upper neocortex.

If you would like me to help you and/or your organization in this process, I would be happy discuss how we can make this happen. It’s what I love to do, which means it gives me great peace of mind to help people in this way.