Part of daily life with imperfect humans is dealing with difficult people…

In your personal life: spouses, misbehaving children, family members and in laws, noisy neighbors, etc.

At work: gossipy colleagues, micromanaging bosses, complaining customers, etc.

These are just a few examples. Encounters with these people happen to most of us frequently, if not every day.

These events and interactions are stressful. For those of us with people pleasing tendencies they can be the source of great anxiety and loss of sleep.

The thing about life and people is that no matter how hard we try, not everybody is going to like us or behave the way we want them to. We can be the caring and wonderful people that we are and we are still going to have unrational, disgruntled customers or out of control toddlers.

What can we do so that we can have peace restored within us and get our sleep at night?

1. Breathe!

2. Take care of ourselves by eating right and getting exercise if we feel particularly stressed about a person or situation.

3. Remember that we can’t control what other people are going to say and do.

4. Even our best of intentions are going to backfire when it comes to other people.

5. We are not responsible for others’ behavior; only our own.

6. If we have done our best, we can give ourselves permission to let it go.

7. People are going to be unreasonable at times and that is not a personal reflection about us. In fact, it is not about us at all. So… don’t take what others say or do personally!

8. If we are feeling personally attacked we may choose to assert ourselves or walk away. Either choice is a good one depending on the situation.

9. Don’t worry about what others think of us. It is none of our business.

10. Remember that we can’t and won’t please everybody.

11. We can limit interactions and time with people who are consistently negative or abusive. We are free to choose who we spend our time with.

12. We are in charge of the way we react to difficult people and situations.

13. We give others too much power if we let them affect our peace of mind and sleep.

14. You may find it helpful to talk it out with someone you trust

15. Writing things down may be helpful too.

Do your best to let difficult people go. Their words and actions do not have to directly affect you if you don’t let them.

You can be like Teflon and just let things slide off you and not stick.

You have the power, not others!

In Peace,

Debra

Related Posts:

• Are you a people pleaser? People pleasing leads to anxiety, worry, and loss of sleep
• Worrying a lot? Get busy doing these ten things.
• People pleasers, it’s okay to look out for yourself!
• A Memo to Monday Morning
• Second guessing one’s self is an invitation for anxiety and insomnia