Difficult people are a fact of life. At home you can avoid them by surrounding yourself with agreeable people, but in the work place most of us don’t have that luxury.

While your natural tendency may be to avoid them at all costs, it’s better to deal with them in a thoughtful manner. This is crucial to your career. If you develop the ability to work with anyone and handle the tough nuts, you’ll be the natural choice for promotions and leadership positions.

The following are some suggestions for resolving potentially awkward work situations. Just remember, if we can learn to effectively deal with difficult people our work life will become much less stressful and far more enjoyable.

Self Confidence

When our lives are made difficult by unsympathetic and dominating people we can quickly lose our self-confidence. To avoid this it is important not to value the opinions of negative people. If we can maintain a self confidence and self belief then it will be easy to ignore the criticisms of difficult work colleagues. Self confidence will not be built by heavily criticizing the difficult person. Self confidence comes through remembering our own positive qualities.

Should You Find a New Job?

Sometimes the people we work with are so awkward that we want to move and get another job. This is a difficult choice. The first thing to remember is that if we move jobs, there is a high chance we will meet similar problems, just with a different set of people. If we keep moving jobs with the hope of finding an office full of saints, we will be continually on the move.

The first thing is to try and deal with the situation; we need to be detached from the awkward person as much as possible. However, if we have really tried everything possible and work is still making us miserable, then is it worth considering a new job. We spend so much of our waking time in our job that we can’t allow unpleasant people to spoil it.

Dealing with a Dominating Boss

Some people enjoy bossing others around; maybe they have their own insecurities and so they try to take it out on their work colleagues. If you have a dominating boss there are no easy solutions. One solution is to give in on little things and consider them as insignificant. If they insist on small issues are done in a certain way then just comply. Generally, it is not worth arguing about the best place to store the stapler - save your energy for more important issues. Don’t feel bad about having to follow these small instruction instructions, even if you don’t agree with them. Just see it as part of your job.

However, whilst it is good to give in on small things, there are certain issues where we cannot allow ourselves to be pushed around. If your boss is encouraging you to be unpleasant to others, lie or perform deceptive actions, then you should not feel compelled to follow. If you feel inwardly awkward about something then avoid doing it. If you start to follow all the whims of your boss, they will invariably seek to exploit your willingness and only ask you to do more awkward tasks.

If you are asked to do something you feel is wrong, you should also try seek the support of other members of staff and someone more senior in the company. In these situations it is not helpful to suffer in silence; a good company should have a support procedure for this kind of eventuality. If your company has no support structure in procedure, consider looking for help from independent bodies who can offer advice.

Avoiding Arguments

Difficult people are usually even more troublesome when you get into arguments. If you are asked to do something you disagree with, it might be appropriate to maintain a silence and just avoid doing it. If your boss encourages you to do the wrong thing, don’t feel obliged to tell him why he is wrong. Dominating people dislike being told they are wrong; in response they will just be defensive and more aggressive.

Instead, just continue to do the right thing. For example, if you are encouraged to speak badly of other colleagues just refuse to do it; make a point of picking out some positive qualities of that person. In these circumstances actions speak louder than words. Rather than arguing directly with our boss, we just don’t follow their bad advice. This means we can avoid doing the wrong thing without having to tell our boss why they are mistaken. This may not help in every circumstance but it is often worth trying.

Dealing With Constant Criticism

Some people seem to have an eye for picking up on people’s faults. No mistake, no matter how small, seems to escape their attention. They even seem to get a certain sense of satisfaction from pointing it out. These kind of people are not much fun to work with, but we shouldn’t let them make our work an unpleasant experience.

Firstly, don’t take all their criticisms to heart. If our presentation has a few errors, it doesn’t mean we are a bad person. If someone is pointing out all our mistakes, remember all the good things you have done; critical people are often blind to the positive contributions people can make. Don’t respond in kind. If we respond to criticism by finding similar faults in the other person there will be no end to the negativity. Either just ignore it or try to find some good things that other people have done. Just smile and remember how insignificant their complaints are.

Leave Work at Work

The good thing about working with difficult people is that at least at the end of the day, you can forget all about your work. But, make sure you do completely switch off from work, and avoid thinking about work problems in the evening and at the weekends. Develop a social life that doesn’t involve just meeting work colleagues. It is good to make a clean break where there is no chance of the conversation being dominated by boring work stuff.

If you find yourself worrying about awkward people away from work, it is a sign that they are having an unhealthy impact on your life. If this is the case, you need to feel greater detachment. Just try not to think about them, tell yourself that whatever problem exists can wait until the next workday.

Conclusion

It is not easy to offer advice about how to deal with difficult people. Every case is different. Whilst maintaining silence may be appropriate in one case, in another circumstance it may be better to seek the help of other people. There is no simple formula for dealing with difficult people. However, certain principles can make your life easier.

The most important thing is to learn how to detach yourself from the problems at work. This means we don’t allow awkward people to dominate our lives. The most effective way to do this is be careful what we think about. We need to ignore their complaints and criticisms and develop our self confidence. If we can develop self confidence then it will be much easier to deal with whatever situation we are facing.

This article was written by Tejvan Pettinger. Tejvan lives in Oxford where he works as a teacher. He enjoys writing on topics of self improvement and updates a blog called Sri Chinmoy Inspiration . Recent articles include: When and How to Criticise Others .

Depending upon our life experiences, each one of us has a different definition of abundance, much of which is learned during childhood. We are taught at an early age to either want for nothing or yearn for more. We learn how to react to those who have much more than us, and we develop our thoughts and attitudes about sharing with the less fortunate. We decide which things we hunger for the most, many times based upon those things that we lacked early in life.

As we grow and develop, we are constantly bombarded by messages regarding wealth, power, money, and greed. Magazines, newspapers, television, and movies all express society’s thoughts regarding such matters, and as time has progressed, we have developed into a more materialistic society. More emphasis has been placed on the ownership of elaborate possessions and such things as spirituality and family values seem to have been cast aside.

This sets us up for great disappointments, since we are taught that we can never have enough. It leaves us striving to reach an ambiguous and unattainable goal – to have “enough.” Yet there is never any definition of what enough truly is.

Happiness in life and an internal feeling of fulfillment come with the achievement of intangible goals, and sometimes we receive the greatest enjoyment out of those actions which help others in need. When we accumulate so much in life in the way of money or personal possessions, it makes it difficult to appreciate those things. However, when we live by more modest means and experience abundance only occasionally, it makes the experience so much sweeter and the enjoyment so much greater. For this reason, our goals of personal development should direct us to a modest lifestyle that allows for true appreciation of our successes, rather than establishing an unfulfilling expectation of constant abundance.

Find Your Definition of Abundance

To help you accomplish this, look to your childhood. What things did you have during your childhood, and what things did you lack? Are your goals for attaining personal possessions or power right now based upon those things you did not have as a child? What feelings do those possessions evoke? Determine which feelings regarding materialistic possessions you still carry with you, which ones have transformed, and why certain feelings have changed. By understanding the origins of your feelings regarding possessions, you will be able to make necessary changes that will restore your life to greater balance.

Determine the Cost of Abundance

Having an abundant supply of personal possessions comes at a great cost, and you need to evaluate whether that cost is really worth ownership of such belongings. Cost involves much more than the monetary aspect of owning personal possessions. Time away from the family, missing your children’s milestones as they grow, loss of sleep, and deteriorating health are all costs associated with maintaining personal possessions.

There is no doubt we must all provide for our basic needs and the needs of our families, but when the importance of owning possessions eclipses the importance of our own personal health and the well-being of our relationships, it is time to reevaluate our values and bring them more in line with reasonable expectations.

Balancing Your Needs with Your Desires

As with most things in life, the best way to achieve happiness is to find a healthy balance. Determine those things you need in life in order to have a comfortable and fulfilled life with your family. Then make a list of your desires – those things above and beyond your basic needs that make your life more comfortable and more enjoyable.

Determine what it would take for you to achieve your basic needs, then determine what you would need to do in order to obtain your desires. Look at the consequences to your personal and emotional well being as a result of attempting to achieve all of your desires.

Finally, balance your lists. When you are setting your goals, ensure all of your family’s needs are met. Then allow for the addition of some of the extras. Ensure you leave yourself personal time for sleep, exercise, and family interaction.

By allowing yourself to experience abundance occasionally rather than pushing to perpetually achieve it, your life will have a greater work life balance. You and your family will have a much greater appreciation for those times when you do get to enjoy life’s little extras, but you will have the proper emotional support and family network to provide you with the greatest satisfactions life has to offer.

This article was written by David B. Bohl - Husband, Father, Friend, Lifestyle Coach, Author, Entrepreneur, and creator of Slow Down FAST . For more info visit his blog at Slow Down Fast blog .

Image by tanakawho .