an agent of change » loving the you in them http://anagentofchange.com managing change in an ever changing world Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:14:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Loving the You in Them http://anagentofchange.com/2010/02/22/loving-the-you-in-them/ http://anagentofchange.com/2010/02/22/loving-the-you-in-them/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:04:33 +0000 Jill http://www.anagentofchange.com/?p=616

By Jill MacGregor

You are driving me up the wall. I see right through your bravado—I think the only one you’re fooling is you. And the neediness. It makes me want to push you off like a slime. Everything’s a refusal with you, a no it won’t work, a that’s not important to me when, of course, it’s important to everyone.

Your fear. Your pretense. Your rules, your unnecessary rules. I just want you to embrace things willingly. I want you to stop making excuses and start doing things you’re afraid of.

Wow, can you smell the intolerance? So attractive.


If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.
Norman Vincent Peale


Just as we have those tender spots that we don’t want others to touch, some people in our lives seem to have those prickly, pointy characteristics that chafe us like bad corduroy on a cold winter day.

Why, why why —we can be so tolerant of near strangers and so intolerant people we know so well?

And those things they do. (shake with exasperation)

Let me take a moment to clarify. I encourage you to be intolerant to liars, rude bastards, cheats, bullies and others of the ilk. I’m talking about smaller imperfections that grow and build over time to annoy us.

Sometimes it’s hard to allow the people who make us crazy an opportunity to change. We freeze them in the moment when their actions irritated us and we keep them there like a prisoner…never seeing them grow, never seeing the changes they make in their lives, never allowing them to surprise us all because they are qualified as the annoying person.

Interesting how we are not qualified as the intolerant person.


If you spot it, you got it.
Anonymous


Oh, life. You do like to rub our noses in things until we finally catch the scent. These characteristics that drive us crazy, they are just a mirror that we are repeatedly forced to look into until we recognize the image looking back at us. That image is always us. It’s just so much easier to be annoyed by others since we are perfect. Or we don’t want to face some of the personal work we really have to do. Or we find it easier to not have to deal with the issue. Or we’ve acquired a taste for pointing our fingers at others.

But like a bad penny, the characteristics that annoy us in others are just going to keep showing up in our relationships and all of those we choose to have in our lives. These people and their annoying bag of tricks are here to teach us self acceptance. We will always learn more from those who irritate us most. They do seem to capture and hold our attention very effectively and illustrate the point so very succinctly, in a most visceral way.

So how do we love the us in them—without making a face, shooting them a side eye or verbally lashing out?


  • Find the meaning and own your piece of it. If everything’s a lesson look harder until you see yours. You might as well do it now…it’s not going to stop showing up uninvited to the party until you do. That characteristic that annoys you—which version of it do you perpetrate?


  • What’s your role? Are you the sharp pointy stick that prods the other person into certain roles and behaviors? Annoyance is a dance that is perfected by two people: each stepping on the other’s toes and pulling apart when they should be moving together in a rhythm. What do you need to correct so that others will stop responding to your actions in a way that you find annoying? Always need to get the last word? Got your tool box on the ready? Are you letting things build up by not using the old “I feel this way when you do that thing.”? Find a way to make some personal corrections.


  • Be a behaviorist on Mars. It’s annoying, they keep doing it, you don’t understand why. Find ways to praise the positive. Pull your head out of its court side seat in the this is why you bug me game and go take a seat in the nose bleed section. You need a different vantage point. Why does it really bother you? What lack in you is their behavior illustrating? This is the moment to look at the whole person instead of their particular behavior. Remember all the positive things you really appreciate about them? Those characteristics still exist—you just stopped looking.


  • Create some space. Less is more. Sometimes people get on your nerves because they are a flavor you can only appreciate in small bites.


  • Try to take the emotion out of it and respond more neutrally to the things that make you want to scream. Easier said than done, YES I KNOW, but just take a breath when you feel your blood pressure rise. That person didn’t wake up early this morning only so they could perfect their How to Annoy You List. They are not doing this to piss you off…that part just seems to happen naturally.


  • Give that person the patience you hope for when you transgress. Because, my friend, just as you can be annoyed, also can you annoy.


    • For more on this, you may want to take a look at My Little Fontanel .

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