How to Deal with Difficult People (part 1)

Step 1: Work on yourself

If you wish that terse, chippy, challenging person in your life would change, a statistically promising first step is to work on … yourself. Kindness impacts the other person, but it changes you. This is our starting point.

Three out of four people who did our 30-Day Kindness Challenge for a romantic partner (and two out of three who did it for any other type of relationship) reported that, although they were the ones taking the challenge to be more kind, they saw the targets of their kindness change for the better in 74% of cases.

In other words, when you change, they change. Kindness disarms others and breaks down walls, and, frankly, when we determine to treat others with kindness, it takes away their power to make us crazy.

There is a vital nuance here. If an out-of-control personality disorder, serious mental illness, or abusive relational dynamics are in play, a “just try harder” attempt at kindness can be exploited to create a more toxic situation. In these cases, putting boundaries in place is often the kindest thing we can do. Why? Because kindness cares about the best interest of the other person. There is nothing healthy about, for example, allowing a difficult family member to destroy their own mental health with how they speak to you and other family members. (For example, “Speaking in that way is unhealthy for me and for you. So, let’s take a break in this conversation until we can address it in a more productive way.”)

If day-to-day boundaries don’t lead to change, we may have to be kind from a distance. But still. Be kind. It changes you, remember?