Dealing With People We Don’t Like
This quote and comment was inspired by a tweet I received from my youngest Niky. They were studying acting at Texas State University and found this perspective in a play they were reading. I immediately loved it, because it gives us the opportunity to have more influence on how we react to “people we don’t like.”
Like all great quotes, this one packs a lot of information into a few words, so let’s take it a section at a time to ensure we get the full benefit. First, I love how it describes people we don’t like in terms of how well we know them. In other words, it implies that we must know people well before we decide we don’t like them. I like this because it keeps us from jumping to conclusions, or writing someone off just because we have interpreted some behavior of theirs as wrong or bad.
I mean, how many times have people thought negative things about you but they were wrong? If this happen to us, it must also happen from us, meaning that we too have probably judged someone as unlikeable by mistake. If we are willing to get to know them a bit better and see who they are in a variety of settings, we can then form our opinion based upon a large behavior sample and therefore are likely to make more accurate judgements.
Once we believe we know someone well enough not to like them (observed them in a variety of settings over a period of time), then we can determine how we want to react to them. For most people, this reaction looks a lot like resentment, anger, frustration, or some other form of negative judgement, but it is rarely beneficial. In fact, it often feels bad.
Given that “bad” is not how we want to feel, and that we don’t want to define ourselves as judgmental, I (and this week’s quote) suggests we choose another reaction, such as compassion. I know that this isn’t the common reaction but let’s look at it to see if it might serve us. First, most would say that compassion, feels better than resentment, and that most of us would like to think of ourselves as compassionate people.
Second, isn’t it fair to say that people who aren’t liked by us are probably also not liked by many others, as well? If so, then we are dealing with a person who lives life being disliked. This often triggers a fear that there is something wrong with them which further impedes their ability to be happy and successful. That’s kind of sad don’t you think?
Plus, I find that when I can see a difficult person as frightened versus frightening, annoying, irritating, etc. that this perspective diminishes their power to effect my life. In fact, having compassion for their living a life of fear, feels more powerful to me or allows me to have maximum influence on my experience of life.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we have to spend time with them. The truth is that we will only be on this planet for a relatively short time, and the quality of the people we spend our time with will go a long way toward determining the quality of our lives. What is important to note here is that we don’t have feel bad about someone (resentment, anger, disgust, etc.) in order to give ourselves permission to not hang around with them. Again, this is often very different from how people have been taught to justify their decisions, however, being able to choose who we spend time with based upon whether they share our values and whether we enjoy being around them is probably something we would recommend to someone we love.
Plus, if everyone in the difficult person’s life let them know that they their behavior was only serving to drive people away, maybe they would change. In other words, this decision not to spend time with dysfunctional people might turn out to be a gift to them because it might motivate them to change… who knows?
Regardless, we wouldn’t be spending our time with them, but it wouldn’t be out of anger, resentment, or disapproval but out of compassion.
And finally, the first part of the quote speaks to this ability to have compassion for people we know well enough not to like as a test of our humanity. In other words, how we see others often says more about us than it does about them, and again, most people want to be as influential in this process of self definition as possible.
Put all this together and it feels as if cultivating the ability to have compassion for those difficult people we encounter, can be a significant factor in our creating our experience of life in a way that serves our highest purpose and in a way that we would recommend to someone we love.
And if this concept (making a statement about who we are in a way we would teach to someone we loved) became the criteria for all of our choices, what a wonderful experience of life we would create, don’t you think?
~ All the best, Dr. Bill