Dealing With Difficult People

Dealing With Difficult People
Feb 21, 2019

As a human being living in the world, one has no choice but living with others whom one needs to interact with daily.  I am no exception.  Half year ago, I changed my job within the same company.  Because of this, I needed to work with someone I found very difficult to work with. Let's call this person Mr. A.

After a month working with Mr. A, I realized what made it hard for both me and him to work together. Three years ago, we used to work in the same team.  Once we disagreed with each other in one of our meetings. As he raised his voice, so, I raised my voice back. So, it was not a fruitful disagreement. (You know disagreement is not always bad. It is how you react when you disagree that can be bad.)  Since then, we seemed to have bias against each other.  Coming back to work with each other again, I have already changed.  I have been practicing mindfulness, having self awareness, meditation and such. I have no more bias against him. But well, I cannot just go tell him, hey, I changed.

After a month working with Mr, A, I learned how to approach him better. When he said something I disagreed but there was no benefit of arguing with him, then, I accepted what he said. But if I thought it would be more benefit to our work with my idea, then, I put myself together first and tried to compose the right and nice words in my head before expressing my idea to him.  When I reviewed his recorded knowledge sharing sessions and I found very useful, I wrote an email to him and our manager how useful his recorded sessions were.  I asked for his help from time to time and never once forgot to thank him. 

After a month working with Mr. A, I also prayed for him in my mind when I saw him daily.  My mind chanted "Met-taa Khun-nung A-ra-hung Met-taa" (เมตตาคุณณัง อะระหัง เมตตา) Met-taa means kindness, mercy and probably love as well. A-ra-hung means one who is far from passions like greed and anger.  So, putting them together, it means one who is far from passions is being kind and loves you. 

After two months working with Mr. A, his negative feeling towards me seemed to be less and less. We worked together much better.  These days, there are still bumpy and rocky moments while we work together but I still continue my way of treating him.  I realize now that it is myself who feel happy as I could let it go and never hold any grudge against him.

Credit:
"เมตตาคุณณัง อะระหัง เมตตา" พระคาถาเมตตามหานิยมของ สมเด็จโต พรหมรังสี
https://www.tnews.co.th/contents/423811
Ann P. in NY who introduced me to "Met-taa Khun-nung A-ra-hung Met-taa".