How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 160

Dealing with Difficult People
November 20th, 2004 by Steve Pavlina
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/11/dealing-withdifficult-people/
How do you deal with difficult, irrational, or abusive people,
especially those in positions of authority who have some degree
of control over your life?
I’ve never met a totally rational human being. Our ability to store
and process information is far too imperfect for that. But our
emotions are a shortcut. The book Emotional Intelligence by
Daniel Goleman describes people diagnosed with alexathemia,
the condition whereby people either don’t feel emotions or are
completely out of touch with their emotions. You’d think such
people would be hyper-rational, but they aren’t. They can’t even
function in society. They have no emotional context for deciding
what’s important to them, so earning a dime is just as important
as earning a million dollars. They’ll spend hours on tasks others
would consider trivialities, like deciding what time to schedule a
dentist appointment. Our emotions are a logical shortcut — we
“feel” the difference between the relevant and the irrelevant.
On to dealing with difficult or irrational people…
I certainly haven’t been sheltered from such people, even though
I’ve only been an “employee” for a total of six months of my life
when I was in college. They’re everywhere! I’ve still had to deal
with irrational/abusive people in business deals, landlords, etc.
But such people rarely get to me because of how I deal with them
on two levels:
1) There was a story about the Buddha where a verbally abusive
man came to see him and starting hurling insults. But the
Buddha just sat there calmly. Finally the man asked the Buddha
why he failed to respond to the insults and abuse. The Buddha

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