Dealing with Difficult People: 5 Early Clues and How to Handle Them

Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have a special ability to create something amazing that can change the planet. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to talk about how to deal with difficult people.

Your ability to deal with people is going to have more of an influence on your success and happiness than any other skill you can develop. Now, it's easy to deal with pleasant, positive, cheerful people. It's when you have to deal with difficult people that you really demonstrate the quality of your personality and your ability to function well in a competitive society. So how do you deal with difficult people? People who have problems, people who are angry, people who are frustrated, people who attack you. Worst of all, people who do not mean you any good and want to take advantage of you.

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 9 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 challenge and frustrations people are dealing with at their home, at their— 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, "God, 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 whatever, it interacts. And it feels like it's gonna explode in this great amount of frustration, and you forget, well, 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 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 that you don't understand their story? You don't know what they're going through. Just like you're frustrated, you're— and you're saying, well, they don't know what I'm going through. Everybody else feels that way. Once you understand that really 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.

Number 2: Stay calm. How we feel internally is how we carry ourselves externally. Once you can smile when you're dealing with people that you don't resonate with, difficult people, once you can keep calm— that inner balance is essential. Keep your head up. A lot of people walk around their whole life with their head down to the ground. Keep your back straight, stand your ground. You don't have to become confrontational with anybody, but we all must tap into our inner power because the power is within. We have to really be connected to who we are. Breathe easy. Once you can be calm and not become so reactive— a lot of people that annoy us, they want us to fall into their trap. Difficult people, whether it's at work, wherever it may be, they want you to battle with them. Whatever you fight, you give energy to. Therefore, resistance makes stronger. Once you can become silent, say what you want to say, but become silent within yourself, you develop inner peace and balance. And therefore, that difficult person is no longer difficult. There are no difficult people. It's how we interpretate what is difficult. It is our interpretation of what it means to be difficult. It's different for every single person on the planet.

Take a deep breath and be patient. Calm down, go slow. Don't let other people's negativity or anger or frustration affect you. Step back in your own mind mentally and just smile. You know, there's an old saying, "If you can't say something nice, don't talk at all." is my advice. Sometimes the very best thing you can do in dealing with difficult people is just to be dead silent. Don't feed the fire by arguing or getting involved. When you're dealing with a difficult person, just stop the clock like a timeout. Just smile and don't say anything. And then when you do say something, remember one of the great communication tools is this: is the person who asks questions has control. The way that you can take control of any negative situation is not trying to win, but simply by asking questions. Say, you know, "Why do you say that?" Or, "Why do you feel that way?" Or, "That's an interesting point of view. How did you come to that point of view?" Or, "How would we know that what you say is true? I mean, is there any proof or validity?" Instead of attacking, simply ask questions. And it's sort of like the matador backs away from the bull. As you keep backing away from the bull, you cape the difficult person by simply asking questions and being genuinely curious about what he or she is thinking and feeling and why they are behaving the way they are. Sometimes you may find that they have a good reason. Sometimes you may find that they misunderstand something. Maybe you will find that they have a difficult problem in their lives. But in any case, be calm, be patient, be controlled, and ask questions, and it will make you the master of the situation.

Some people have got a negative blood group. It's just the way some people are. They wear negativity like an old comfortable coat. It just seems to fit them really well. So they're the kind of people that even if they won the lottery would say, "Just my luck, it wasn't the rollover week." You know, and their mantra for life, never forget, every silver lining has a black cloud. But I want us to be careful of these people because sometimes I think we need to challenge them, because sometimes I think they're unaware of how their negativity and their misery can impact those around them.

Them.

Maybe you could even use humour to defuse the situation, you know, "How long have you been a motivational speaker then?" But I think we need to be careful that although people might be miserable by nature, let's just be prepared to challenge that and sometimes use humour to defuse the situation.

My philosophy on this is really simple. It's the philosophy that life is too short for dealing with difficult and toxic people. I mean, like, why? Why make life more difficult for yourself? Life is already pretty challenging. You're already working really hard on your own life, on your own self. Why are you bringing yourself down with these, uh, with these toxic people? There's like, there's no reason for it, right? So my strategy here and my solution ultimately is to get rid of these people out of my life. I want to live a life where the people that are in my life are supporting me, encouraging me, bringing in positivity. They're building, they're building something with me rather than going against me. And so that's kind of the ultimate solution. I really want to get to like the root cause of it here, because a lot of people, what they do, what I see them doing, is they're so stuck like in the social matrix. They're so worried about being reliant, relying upon various social relationships that they're not willing to get rid of these toxic people out of their lives. And what this does is it just, it creates this like spiral of negativity that goes down and down and down and brings you with it. And there's no need to live a life like that. In fact, what I'm going to argue is that you can't really self-actualize, you can't really create a powerful and happy, fulfilling life if you're surrounding yourself with these types of folks. Jim Rohn, uh, love Jim Rohn, he has a lot of great wisdom. One of the most, uh, wise things that he said was that you are the average of the top 5 associates that you hang out with. What this means is that if you take and make a list of all the people in your life and you write a number down for how many hours per week you're spending with each one of those people, and you then rank everybody according to the number of hours you spend with them. The top 5 people that you spend the most time with, these are the people that have the most influence on you. It's a very simple theory. Basically, whoever you hang out with is who you're gonna absorb into yourself, and you kind of become the average of all that. Well, if this principle is true, then who do you want to surround yourself with? Positive, empowering people? Or negative, disempowering people. If you do this exercise, you actually write this out, you actually tally up the numbers, you might be shocked to discover that you hang out with some people a lot more than others. You might also be shocked to discover that some of those people you hang out with and spend 5 or 10 or even 20 hours a week with, that those are super negative, super pessimistic, super miserable and depressive anger-prone type of people. And maybe that's why you're not getting the success you want in your life, is because you're around these type of people all the time.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know, what did you think of this video? What was the rule that most applies to you that you're going to immediately implement somehow into your life or your business? Please let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Leave it down in the comments below. I'll I also want to give a quick shout out to Marcus Campbell. Marcus, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and doing the review on it. I really appreciate the support, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the read.

Today we have a special book review for you, and it's about Your One Word by Evan Carmichael.

So thank you guys again for watching. I hope you have an amazing day. I believe in you and hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. As always, much love.

I'll see you soon.

When you think about that person in your life, and usually people have someone, they're like, "Oh, I know the difficult person." Right. The first step is to identify which type do they fall into. There's 4 main types of difficult people. And by the way, on our worst day, we all fall into one of these types.

Oh, that's right.

Right? Okay? Yeah. So one might sound familiar. So the first one is downers. So negative Nancys, Debbie Downers, they complain, they come into the room and it's like the energy just drops out of the room.

Absolutely, yeah.

They complain a lot, that kind of bucket.

Right.

The second bucket is better-thans. So these are show-offs, people who name-drop. I always say they one-up. So it's someone—

Oh yeah.

You know, like—

You have a story, you went to Italy and blah, blah, blah, and then someone said, oh yeah.

I went to Italy even longer, it was even better, right? So they always like, if you have something good, they have something better. If you have something big, they have something bigger. One up. They name drop things. They just, they, when people feel low confidence, this is what they do to make themselves feel better. So they feel like they have to be better than.

Right.

Okay, so the third type are passives. So this happens typically when people are so low confident that they don't have a voice. So they don't make decisions, right? You ask them, so what do you think? So what do you want to do? Whatever you want.

Right.

They can be a little difficult in conversation. You ask them a question, they have a one-word answer.

Right.

They don't ask you anything back. They're very passive. It's usually because they're afraid. They don't think they're worth it.

Right.

The fourth difficult type of person is downers, passives, uppers, oh, and tanks. Yeah. So tanks are the ones where they can get really angry, kind of explosive. Explosive. They can be called bossy, which I think is a banned word these days. Right, for women, yeah. We're not supposed to use bossy. So they kind of come in and they want to be a control freak. They're like, I want to take control of the situation. So they can be very emotional. That's the cue you want to watch out for. So once you identify the type of person that you're dealing with, the second step, and this is the biggest mistake, is you can't try to fix them.

Right.

Right.

You have to adjust to them, don't you?

Right, you have to adjust to them. The problem is, is if you try to tell a tank to calm down, they usually freak out even more.

Right.

If you tell a passive to speak up, that makes them even more shy.

Right.

So if you try to fix them, that usually makes them even more uncomfortable.

Sure.

So the better thing to do is step 3, and that's to try to understand them. Okay. So if you can shift the mindset from, I don't wanna fix them or change them, I wanna understand where they're coming from. I call this finding their value language. So everyone, has a value language. This is something that they— it drives their actions. It's what they hold most dear. So it could be knowledge. They want to know everything. Or it could be money, that they want huge amounts of financial success.

Do they all have the same kind of language? I mean, does the tank always have the same kind of language?

So typically, like, better-thans are know-it-alls. Typically that goes along, but not always. Typically passives, uh, usually they want to be in control of their relationships.

Okay.

So like to know the people in the room. So figure out, and you can do this by asking really open-ended questions, to figure out what is driving them. That will usually calm them down.

Well, give me an example of a question I would ask a tank, say.

Sure, so let's say that you have a tank and you can see that they're kind of in control mode. Like they're walking around, they're trying to control everything. You can say, so tell me what's been going on for you. Or instead of asking like, how are you doing? How's work? You can say, so are there any issues that are bothering you? Or what personal passion projects are you working on?

Okay.

Those kind of deeper questions can usually get them out of that overbearing mode and into discussion with you. And that leads you perfectly into the fourth. So you've identified the type. Right. You've said you're not going to fix them. You are trying to understand them. The last one is to make sure they're not toxic to you.

Oh, good point.

Right. So this is all about you now. So making sure you have boundaries set on time limits.

Because the downer can really bring you down.

It just sucks the energy out of it. So you go, okay, you know what, I can't bring that downer friend to a party. Or if I have a party, I can only talk to them in limited doses.

Right.

Or there are safe topics. So for tanks, you might have someone who when they get around a certain topic, they get really upset. You know that is a no-go topic for them.

So don't talk to a tank about politics.

Right, exactly. Family members. So if you have people that they're difficult, but you have to spend time around them, that you're only spending time with them on their best days. So you know that, you know what, they're not good in social situations, they're much better one-on-one, right? We're better off going to a meal or going to coffee. So setting up limits either on time or topics so they don't become toxic to you, and that makes it a lot more manageable.

Do you also have to watch not getting caught up in their— I mean, getting caught up in their drama?

Yeah. So what's interesting is there's something that's called chameleonization, right? So we become like the person we're with. Right. And so with difficult people, you have to be so careful that when you're with that Debbie Downer, you don't also get into that critical, gossipy, complaining mode.

And it's easy to do.

Oh, it's so— because we want to be congenial. Right. And so we're like, oh, if we're angry like them, like a tank, or if we're really quiet and a passive— but actually that makes them feel even worse because you're both getting into this really bad area. If you can just go If you go into understanding mode, they actually will come out of their shell and they go into their best self.

And the passive the same way? If you can do that with them?

It's the same way, 'cause most people try to fix passives. Like one of my good friends, she's just very, very shy and people always tell her, "Speak up!" Oh, yeah. And that makes her even more shy. So if you ask really specific directed questions about what, you know, what kind of personal passion project she's working on, get her talking about things she's excited about.

Yeah.

Then she's like, "Ah," and she can relax and she becomes more active.

Yeah.