There are many toxic people around us. It can easily identify a toxic person. Without any shred of conscience, they use others for their own advantage and they are selfish and also manipulative.
They are a kind of people that are really difficult to deal with. This article will really help you if you’re someone who has to put up with such people on a regular basis.
A Zen Master has shared the best ways to identify the toxic people and how you can deal with them. Even though this can seem obvious, there are times when we really can’t identify the toxic people around you.
9 Traits of Toxic People:
- They talk more than they listen. They are truly narcissistic and manage to make everything about themselves.
- They are completely unwilling to learn from their mistakes. Frankly, they’ll never accept that they’re capable of making mistakes.
- They exaggerate everything. Drama seems to incessantly follow them around.
- They are compulsive and often unrepentant liars.
- They force relationships. They value relationships for the outward superficiality and not for any real connection.
- Everything is judged by the experience they’ve had. Their experience is the only one that seems to count.
- They have to talk you down to keep their own self-esteem up.
- They’re very controlling and domineering people.
- They completely lack tack and diplomacy. They don’t care if they hurt other’s feelings.
How You Can Respond to Them
A Zen Master on Reddit shared a very sage advice on how to deal with such individuals. Here we quote him directly:
“The deeper your present moment of peace is, the easier it will be to react non-passionately when faced with hostility. As you get better at this, you realize how tortured and suffering an individual has to be to try to elicit such harsh reactions. Based on your knowledge you can develop your empathy and compassion and in time this insight will let you be more peaceful in the present moment.”
Eventually with enough peace and insight on your side, you can begin to extinguish the fires of hostility by extinguishing anger with patience and understanding. It’s hard to continue treating someone harshly when they are treating you well. You can effect a change in the mental state of the person being hostile to you. In helping them relieving themselves of their negative feelings and anger, you are not just helping them but also yourself as you no longer need to deal with them as the people they were.”
The post says the path of ‘ahimsa’ which means non-violence and has been the cornerstone of many mystical and political philosophies in the East.
Even Gandhi used these principles to protest against the oppressive British regime. It basically needs to not let the anger to touch your mind.
It needs a lot more strength to restrain yourself, instead from being cowardly method of dealing with problems. This can be the perfect way of changing the people around you. ‘By being the better man’ you’ll get a spiritual strength that should never be underestimated. You need a rare and incredibly potent power to make people respect you.
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