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.
(gentle music)
– 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.
(gentle music)
– Keep your perspective as being a champion of humanity.
What do I mean by that?
You know what happens often times
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’ve just pissed you off, right?
They just did something and you think, oh well you know
they’re like this, or, they were going like this.
You don’t know.
Maybe you had a co-worker 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 a whole morning
and 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 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’d feel like, gah,
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 a domestic violence at a 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 if you feel like it’s going to explode
in this great amount of frustration.
And you forget well oh 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 there.
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 the 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 the 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 influenced 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 got 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 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 to get.
– Number two, 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
is how we interpret 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 don’t
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 what 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
is 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,
she’ll smile. look it wasn’t the rollover week.
In 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.
Maybe you could even use humor to defuse the situation.
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 humor to defuse the situation.
– My philosophy on this is really simple
is 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, 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 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 relied 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 it 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, I love Jim Rohn,
has a lot of great wisdom.
One of the most wise things that he said was
that you are the average of the top five 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 with each one of those people.
And you then rank everybody according
to the number of hours you spend with them,
the top five 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 are going to 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
and 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 that you hang out with
and spend five or ten 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 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.
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 four 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. – Okay.
So one might sound familiar.
So the first one is downers,
so negative Nancies, Debbie downers.
They complain, they come in the room and it’s like
the energy just drops out of there.
– Absolutely. – 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 hit a one-up.
So. – Oh yeah.
– You know like.
– You have a story you went to Italy and blah-de-blah.
And then someone said, oh yeah.
– I went to Italy longer.
– Right. – 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.
– Right. – One up.
– Got it. – And they name drop
things, they just they, when people feel low confidence
this is what they do to make themselves feel better
They feel like they have to be better than.
– Right. – Okay so the third type
are passes.
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 want to do?”
“Whatever you want.” – Right.
– They can be a little difficult 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.
And 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.
They can be called bossy, which I think
is a banned word these days.
– Right.
– We’re not supposed to use bossy,
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.
– Yeah. – 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 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 three
and that’s to try to understand them.
So if you can shift the mindset from,
I don’t want to fix them or change them,
I want to understand where they’re coming from,
I call this finding their value language.
So everyone has a value language.
This is something that they in 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.
– Okay.
– Typically that goes long, but not always.
Typically passives 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
when 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?”,
or, “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.
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 sets.
– Because a 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 they 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.
Or if it’s family members.
So I had 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. – Right.
– 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 called it’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.
– 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 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?
– Passive the same way because most people try to fix
passes 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,
get her talking about things she’s excited about.
– Yeah. – Then she’s like
(exhales) and she can relax and she becomes more active.
”
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