How to Deal With Frustrating People

How do you deal with frustrating people? You know, people who just drive you mad at work because you think that they're so stupid. Or people who are in your family who keep challenging you and they know how to press all the buttons on you and get you to freak out all the time. Or you're just going through your day and you're supposed to do something and you run into somebody in line who's rude to you. How do you deal with people who really draw your eye or who really just frustrate you? Well, you know, I guess first, before we get into judgment, before we get into five steps about how to deal with those folks, you should ask is, are you that person? Because if you are, then all of this is gonna be really funny. I think it will be very helpful for you to analyze who you are, how you treat people, what are your interactions like with others. But I'm guessing you're probably not the frustrating person, right? I don't know. But let's assume that you are not the jerk. You are not the frustrating person. You've got your angel wings on. You're completely perfect. Cause you would never frustrate anybody. I mean, you would never do anything wrong, right? I mean, you have no dark side. You are absolutely pristine and perfect. So. So let's just assume that you're not the frustrating one. What can you do to deal with frustrating people? I would say the first thing is to keep your perspective as being a champion of humanity. What do I mean by that? You know, what happens oftentimes when we're frustrated with other people is we've lost our connection with humanity in some way or another. We're in a big hurry and we've forgotten that people have stories and realities that we do not know about. You don't know what is going on in somebody's day when they just pissed you off, right? They just did something and you think, oh, well, you know, they're like this, or they're going like this. You don't know. Maybe you had a coworker who was supposed to deliver something in the morning and they didn't deliver. Now you're fired up and you're frustrated about them, but you didn't know that, oh, their child woke up in the morning and was throwing up all morning and they haven't slept in the last nine hours. Sometimes you don't know that somebody had a death in the family. Sometimes you don't know. Somebody on their way to work got some terrible news. Sometimes you don't know the real challenges and frustrations people are dealing with at their home, in their regular life, with their family. You don't know. You don't know if this person who you're so angry with, you feel like, I just wish I could punch them in the face, I'm so mad at them. You don't know that they're a victim of domestic violence at home. See, we make all these assumptions about people. Well, they're just so stupid or there's something wrong with them and we never know their real story. And soon as you lose your patience with people, you lose your connection with humanity. You lose that understanding that you know what stuff happens in people's lives. And maybe right now they've had a lot of chaos and your life is going along smooth, or maybe you're having a lot of chaos and all of a sudden your chaos and your smoothness or, or whatever, it interacts and it feels like it's going to explode in this great amount of frustration. And you forget, gosh, people have things going on. As busy, as stress filled as you are, other people have that too. As freaked out as a heavy plate of responsibilities as you have, other people have that too. And if you don't believe that, then you've gotten to a place where you've allowed your intellect to grow your ego to such a level that, that you can't connect with humanity anymore. And I know that sounds flippant to say, but what happens for so many people is they do. Especially folks who are quote unquote, intellectuals, right? People who feel like they're very evolved, enlightened, supremely conscious. What ends up happening for them is sometimes they have lost that real connection with humanity because they think they're so special versus other people. And here's ultimately the challenge with folks who do have an ego like that or who do feel so much more supremely special than other people, that other people, they just don't understand how much they're frustrating me. They become very caged in their life. It's like watching an animal that is caged that gets resigned because it's been wild and free at some point and now it's resigned in the back of the cage, curled up, angry and frustrated, pointing at people, they don't understand me. They don't understand me. They don't understand me. And the folks who often say other people don't understand me are the same people who rarely ever raise their hand and ask for help. They're the folks who easily get frustrated, annoyed, or resign from other people. And now when they need help or when they want to progress their life. Because they've drawn away from people who they believe to be stupid, because they've drawn away from others who they believe other people can't understand them. Because they believe other people can't understand them. They don't ask for help, they don't collaborate, they don't socialize, they don't create the very influence relationships and networks that is necessary for them to grow to the next level in their life and in their business. So you have to think about that for a moment. Have you gotten so disconnected from other people that you're often frustrated with them because you forgot you don't understand their story, you don't know what they're going through. Just like you're frustrated and you're saying, well, they don't know what I'm going through. Everybody else feels that way. Once you understand that the reality of humanity is it's a bunch of human beings walking around with a sign at the top of their head that says, please understand me, please be patient with me, please help, then you stop getting so frustrated with people and you realize that we're all struggling, we're all doing the best that we can. We all have big dreams and goals and desires. And being connected to humanity is learning to be patient with people. Again, I would say that the second thing to take into consideration if you're constantly frustrated with people is clarity. Do people really know what you desire, what you think, what you want, what you're doing, what you dream of? Because most folks who you're frustrated with, they often don't know you. And whose fault is that? Is it their fault? Are they just supposed to know everything going on in your life? See, what happens is we forget that a lot of folks who we are frustrated with, they don't have clarity about what they're supposed to be doing or what we specifically need, want desire from them. How, when and where? Right? We totally forget that we're frustrated. But they don't know. Right? Your wife might not know how to please you, Your husband might not know what you need, Your friends might not know what you deeply desire in your own heart. Because maybe you haven't really communicated yet. Maybe you mentioned it one time, maybe you left a hint one time, maybe you sat them down 1, 2, 3, 4 times and told them. But people to have real clarity, need to have real conversations, real structure to those conversations to be helped and sort of their hands held to help them know what they need to do for you. And a lot of people don't do this. Well, many of you know I'm a high performance coach by trade. I train people and have trained more people on the topic of high performance than I think anybody alive today on the planet. And I can tell you, working with some very high level, high performers, they often assume that their teams know exactly what they're supposed to be doing. These senior level, senior leader positions, we're talking about CEO level, right? The C suite of major Fortune 500 companies. Who are my clients, often they look at some of their team and they're like, why aren't they doing this? And I ask, well, do they have clarity around that? Well, of course they do. Well, tell me how would they have clarity around that? And what I find over and over and over again, they're frustrated with their people, but they themselves have failed to clearly communicate. So you have to hold the mirror up once more and say, well, are my people frustrated with me because I haven't clearly communicated? I'm frustrated with them, but maybe they don't really know what they need to do and maybe I haven't been as clear as I need to be. I think the third thing that we have to consider is that maybe folks, even if they do have clarity and we're frustrated with them all the time because we're like, they should know this or I told them this, but they don't do something that we need them to do. We have to take into consideration that people often lack either competence or confidence and this is not a value judgment to other people. I lack those things too in lots of areas of my life, as do you See a lot of people, they don't know how to do something. So we're frustrated with them and we just kind of beat them and like just do this. But they don't know how, they don't know where to begin. They're overwhelmed. They don't have a plan, they don't have the knowledge, the skills, the abilities, the competencies and the capabilities to actually be able to support what you want, to give you what you desire, what you've told them you need. So sometimes we have to take back and put that hat on a humanity again and say, they might not know how to do this. I might need to coach them through this and help them through this. And yeah, is that frustrating? Can be. Or maybe you can change your perspective about your role in life, you know, because I think that part of being frustrated with people on a continual basis, it's reality for you, is also losing that part of that. We used to Talk about in the early days of personal development, they used to talk about in the old literary classics, we don't hear the phrase or the word very often anymore. But do you remember that old thing called character to development? Character, Part of having character. Part of one of the supreme virtues of having character is having patience with people. And there's a part of character that also says, you know what? I need not only have patience with people, I need to help people. Part of real character is turning yourself from someone who's frustrated with people all the time into more of a servant, into someone who can help people all the time. As soon as you start desiring to want to help people, to help them through their pains and their struggles, to help them understand something, to inspire them to do better things, once that becomes the lens that you're looking through the world now, you're not frustrated with everyone now. Now everyone's not an idiot. Now everyone's not, you know, bad or some other value judgment. Instead, now you're like, oh, okay, it seems like they're frustrated and they're challenged with this too. Or they don't know how to do this, or they don't have the competency or capability, let me help them. And it brings a supreme amount of patience that you'll have in your life and perspective about the reality of other people. I can tell you it's supremely rare, and I know you use that word a lot, supremely rare for me to get frustrated with people. I don't honk at people in traffic. I don't scream at my staff members. I don't holler at my family members. I don't belittle my employees, my teams, the people that I serve, my partners or my audiences. Because I know, you know what, we're all on a rough path path here. Life is not easy. And once you realize that and you can accept that life isn't easy, then you start to gain more human heart. And then you start to understand that there's no reason for you to be upset with people because everyone's doing their best. And I would say that the fifth thing that you can consider if you're always frustrated with people is, is to accept a higher level of consciousness in your life that says very simply, this, it's not your job to control everybody. It's not your job to control every situation. That this idea that we can control everything, that's where we get frustrated. We're frustrated because we're lacking control. A level of consciousness says, you know what? This is a pretty big universe. There's probably a lot of random stuff that's going to happen that's crazy that we cannot anticipate. And so our job is to be as present and patient and loving as we can into every situation we enter. Even when the stuff hits the fan, even when the kids are running around breaking up the house, even when the teenager comes in and mouths off, even when the employee's a jerk, even when chaos strikes us, if we can stay centered and loving, and we can do that over and over and over again, wearing humanity's hat, saying, I understand people are also dealing with things I don't know about. I understand people might not know what they're supposed to do. I understand people might not know how to do what they're supposed to do. I understand my role as a person of character is to have patience and a servant heart to help people. And I understand that I can't control everything, so I'm going to do the best that I can. If we can rise to that level of consciousness, then we can more easily have what we call the charged life. Sam.