How to Recognize and Walk Through Open Doors: Finding Opportunities in Everyday Life

How to Recognize and Walk Through Open Doors: Finding Opportunities in Everyday Life

by | Mar 3, 2025 | Uncategorized

Introduction: Recognizing Opportunities in Everyday Life

I’ve worked with people for close to 20 years now. I have been a social worker, a graduate TA, an adjunct professor, a campus mentor, a meditation teacher, a therapist, a life coach, and now I’m an executive coach and consultant.

My Journey: How I Learned to Walk Through Open Doors

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 19. I tried the medications, but they created more problems than they fixed. I’m a pretty all or nothing guy, so giving me pharmaceutical grade speed, especially when I was first coming out of addiction at such a young age, was a recipe for disaster.

And it was disastrous.

Because of this, I’ve learned how to manage my ADHD without any sort of medication. One of the best ways of doing this is by making sure there’s a lot of variety in the work that I do. When I worked at a small private university I was a campus mentor, a therapist, and an adjunct professor. I also had a meditation group and a pornography addiction group, and I was also going through grad school for counseling at the time, so there was enough to keep me interested. I got to meet a lot of different people and do a lot of different things. It was cool. 

I left the university to open a private practice. Being a therapist was a good fit for me. I got to have intentional conversations with 6 or 7 different people every day. I started another meditation group that met weekly. I also started my blog, podcast, and posting on social media during this time. This was all enough to keep me interested.

The same has held true for me as a coach. I started off working with different people and expanded into helping people with their businesses. Now, I work with people, teams, and businesses in a bunch of different industries and get to address a bunch of different issues. I help people launch and grow their businesses, I help companies strategize and plan their next steps, and I get to teach and do trainings on different topics that interest me.

This is all well and good and might even be necessary to keep me from changing careers again, but it has led me to one consistent problem: I’ve never known how to tell people what it is I do beyond saying that I am an executive coach and consultant, and nobody really knows what that means. 

This was the problem when I was a therapist and people would ask what I specialized in. I never pinned myself down to any one thing, so I always had trouble answering that question.

Doing a little bit of everything isn’t too much of a problem until you are trying to market yourself online and you need a quick way to grab people’s attention when they see what you do. By doing so many things and not being able to sum it all up into one phrase that helps people understand what it is I do better than anyone else, I was all over the place, and this made me look unfocused and kept people from connecting with me.

That all changed over the last few months when I started working with a media partnership company that found me online and reached out. One of their recruiters saw me on a podcast and thought I might have something worth sharing. After an obsessive amount of due diligence, I took the leap and started working with them.

The process started with an initial interview where we talked about my life and the work I do. If you know me personally or have followed me for very long, you know that the last 20 years have led to a lot of change for me. I spent the first part of my life struggling with mental health and a variety of behavior and addiction issues. I was a nightmare of a human being—I don’t say this with any sort of self-deprecation or self-criticism; it’s obvious in retrospect.

The cofounder of the company stopped me as I was talking about younger James and told me he could not understand how that person became the person he was talking to now. He said he could not see the connection between the two. 

I appreciate hearing that from people because it’s a sort of validation of the changes I’ve made in my life, but I’ve never had a good answer for it. I don’t have some sort of defining moment that changed everything for me like you see in Sandra Bullock movies. 

It was a slow process of evolving away from who I was and into who I am, so I said what I always say: “I just walk through open doors when I see them, and I don’t waste my time trying to kick down doors that are closed or get into rooms where I don’t belong.”

The Power of Open Doors: What It Really Means

I’ve said this to people a bunch of times. Nobody’s ever dug into it before, but this guy did. He stopped me and started asking questions about what it looks like to walk through these open doors, how I can tell when a door is closed, and what doors I’ve walked through on this path that got me to where I am now.

One of the first examples I used of seeing an open door and saying yes was the initial consultation with his company. I told him that after meeting the recruiter, I was excited to work with them, but if something did not work out, I would have accepted that and looked for other opportunities. I wouldn’t be upset about it. I wouldn’t cry about it. I wouldn’t say it was unfair. I wouldn’t wonder why someone else got the opportunity instead of me. I would just look for another one.

He carried the idea over to my work with people, pointing out how helping people recognize opportunities and take advantage of them seems to be a central part of what I do. He suggested that we home in on and try to perfect this idea and Walk Through Open Doors was born.

I’ll be honest—I wasn’t completely sold on this being the primary driver of what I do from now on at first. It felt too simple and reductive of everything I’ve done (because I’m soooooooo special), but as I started working with it, it became more and more clear that he was onto something.

Like so many of the best things in our lives, it turned into one of those hindsight-is-20/20 moments. As I began to look back at the last 15 years of working with people, I realized that this should have been clear to me all along.

When I first left counseling, I kept getting messages from people asking me to recommend a counselor who was “like me.” When I would ask what they meant by “like me,” they would tell me that they wanted someone who helped them look at options and take concrete steps toward change instead of reflecting their feelings back to them.

I realized that one of the reasons I’ve never been super helpful to people who are dealing with depression is because I am always looking for opportunities to do something, and that can drive them up the wall. I have a hard time sitting with a situation that is not as good as it could be, and I’m almost pathological in noticing and assessing different options to change things.

I realized that some people had (usually jokingly) accused me of toxic positivity because of my belief that there is always an option and that we can always do something no matter the situation. Viktor Frankl saw this in the Nazi concentration camp he was confined in, recognizing that no matter what our circumstances are, we always have control over our response to them. There’s always something we can do. I always say I don’t get to argue with the guy in the Nazi concentration camp. 

The “OK, Cool” Mindset: Reframing Challenges as Opportunities

I realized that I’ve articulated this to myself and others by saying, “OK, cool,” no matter what happens.

I lost my job? OK, cool. Does this free me up to pursue a different career now? Does it mean there are new opportunities I may not have looked for when I was comfortable? I wound up having my own counseling practice, which led to my coaching practice, because the job I thought I would have for life went sideways.

I messed up the tendons in my elbow and can’t lift weights or work out hard right now? OK, cool. What other kinds of exercise can I do? Now, I wouldn’t trade my morning walk for anything.

I’m experiencing anxiety and dread. OK, cool. I’ve learned that in times like this, my ego is stripped away, and I am forced to rely on something bigger than myself. I always come out the other side better because of it.

The Danger of Waiting: Why Perfect Conditions Never Arrive

None of this is meant to dismiss the difficulties and struggles inherent in life. None of this is meant to dismiss the fact that things happen that are not good and that we cannot accept very easily.

I don’t need to tell you about those things, though. The news, social media, blogs, and every other medium is dominated by things telling you that life is particularly unfair right now and that it’s not your fault. It’s difficult to find a website that doesn’t have something on it about how awful life is.

I’m not here to dispute that. I don’t have a perfect life. I’ve been honest about my struggles, particularly the difficulty of the last few years. I’m not here to say that there is no difficulty in life and that everything will be fine if you look for the good in it, but I am here to tell you that there are a lot more opportunities available than people think there are.

There are new opportunities in every situation. They may not be the opportunities we want and may require difficult things of us, but that does not mean they are not there. We often confuse not getting what we want with not having any options.

Let’s say you are hungry. You want a sandwich, but you are out of bread. This doesn’t mean you have to starve.

That sounds ridiculous, but a lot of people live their life that way.

You’ve heard me talk a lot about how our self-obsession is the primary source of our suffering. This has been getting worse since the 1960s and is now on steroids because of the hyper-personalized form of capitalism we exist within and the echo chambers of social media.

It’s important to understand that the people who want you to click on their articles and buy their products have learned that it’s a lot easier to get you to do this by telling you that they understand how much everything sucks and that they are sorry you are trapped. This is a way for them to fake empathy and then offer you a solution that just so happens to benefit them.

A lot of this is done under the guise of good things. Some of the people telling you that everything sucks may have good intentions. Still, in the end, they are robbing you of your ability to make the changes you need to make in your life.

It is true that the opportunities in our lives are impacted by factors beyond our control and that there are people who have a lot more opportunities than others, but this does not mean that you do not have any opportunities. This is the false dichotomy they’ve been shoving down our throats for the last 60 years, and it is crippling people.

Letting Go of Struggle: Why Some Doors Open When You Stop Forcing Them

They also tell us that opportunity has to be a struggle. They tell us we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, hustle, grind, and live a miserable life in order to seize opportunity. To some extent, this is because people all want to believe they fought hard and made their own way, but none of us have ever done anything completely on our own. It doesn’t have to be hard. Many opportunities don’t require anything more than the ability to see them and a willingness to step into them.

That was one thing I liked about the idea of walking through open doors – there are often opportunities all around us that we aren’t seeing because we are so focused and intent on struggle. I thought that leaving the job I had before opening my own office was a struggle, but as I look back, I see that what I needed to do could not have been clearer. It didn’t require me to pick up and carry some kind of load; it actually required me to put one down.

I still remember the moment that I realized that the situation would not be addressed and that I had done everything I could to make it right. This moment of clarity allowed me to go home for lunch and submit my letter of resignation without turning it into an angsty struggle. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I was carrying so much weight that it was preventing me from walking through an open door into something completely different. I just had to put it down and leave.

This is what we’re going to talk about going forward. Learning to recognize the open doors in our life, knowing how to assess them, how to tell if we want to walk through them, how to identify closed doors and not waste our time on them, and the kinds of things we need to do and be every day to set ourselves up to see the open doors that are all around us.

Journal Prompts

  • In what areas of my life do I feel trapped?
  • What is the story that reinforces this idea of being trapped?
  • If I had a magic wand, how would I use it to escape being trapped?
  • What are my options to escape whatever it is that has me trapped? 
    • (This question is important. Make sure to catalog every available option, even the bad ones or the ones you are unwilling to consider. It’s important to recognize that we do have agency in situations.)

If you recognize options and then weigh them out and decide against them, this will help you see that you are, to some extent, choosing to remain where you are, and that has power in and of itself.

👉 There’s always an option. If you’re ready to recognize the doors in your life, let’s talk. Schedule a free coaching consultation today.

How to Meditate: A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness and Focus

How to Meditate: A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness and Focus

by | Feb 7, 2025 | Uncategorized

I work with people as an executive coach and consultant these days, but I used to spend a lot of my time teaching people how to meditate. I had classes that taught my clients about the benefits of meditation, deep breathing techniques, mindfulness exercises, and how to build a meditation practice.

Everything I do revolves around the idea of walking through open doors – seizing the opportunities that are immediately available in your life. I’m good at recognizing opportunities and capitalizing on them, and I’m good at helping other people do the same. I attribute a lot of this to the cognitive flexibility and mental resilience that meditation gave me.

I may not teach it as often these days, but the benefits of my early meditation practice remain. Read on to see how it can help you. 

What is Meditation?

This post is all about what meditation is and how it helps with mindfulness and focus. It may not seem like it should be complicated, but almost all the answers I see leave things feeling murky. Even after teaching meditation for the last ten years, I still have trouble formulating a precise definition.

In short, meditation is the training of attention and awareness, a practice that improves focus, relaxation, and emotional clarity. This training can bring clarity, tranquility, and a deeper understanding of one’s tendencies, habits, and nature.

That’s the most precise definition I can come up with, but there’s a lot more to the practice and discipline of meditation. Keep reading, and we will see where we land.

But What is Meditation really?

I get it – that definition doesn’t tell us very much.

Sure, it’s the training of attention and awareness, but what does that mean?

How do you do that? 

Why would you even want to?

The most basic form of meditation is where you give your attention to one thing exclusively for a set period. This one thing can be the breath or the sounds around you. It can be physical sensations in the body, such as your hands or the place where your butt meets the cushion or chair. It can be the repetition of a word or phrase, often called a mantra.

I know this sounds simple – maybe too simple – but it is much more difficult than it seems.

To understand this, take a moment and consider how often you are doing the opposite of focusing on one thing.

How often are you giving your attention to two or three or four different things?

How many times have you been on a long trip and realized you can’t remember the last hour?

How often does someone tell you their name, only for you to forget it 15 seconds later?

We spend a lot of time distracted, and that’s not a habit we break quickly. 

When we sit down in meditation and bring the mind back to one thing, whatever that might be, we are teaching it to stay in one place. It is as simple as focusing until we notice we are distracted and then returning to the object of meditation. 

We do this over and over again, without criticism or judgment or assessment of the distraction or ourselves, until our timer dings and we go about our day.

That’s all there is to it.

There’s nothing magic about it. There’s nothing especially complicated about it. It is a simple training of attention and awareness.

Try it right now:

Simple Meditation Guide

Sit comfortably.

Notice your breath.

See if you can stay focused on it from the beginning of the inhale to the end of the exhale.

When you notice you are distracted, return to the breath.

Don’t assess, judge, or criticize the distraction or yourself. Just return.

That’s it.

It’s not as easy as it seems it would be.

This makes sense if you think about it. The mind tries to take in as much information as possible, but it can only do so much. Because of this, it has to constantly scan the environment to make sure we are getting the information we need to keep us safe.

 The scanning isn’t the problem. The problem is that the mind doesn’t know how to stop, so it jumps from thing to thing to thing, some real, some imagined.

Did I shut the garage door? Oh man, I hope I did. Should I go back and check?

I hope Michael isn’t rude to me today. I don’t have it in me to deal with him this morning. 

I wish I hadn’t made fun of that girl in high school. I hope it didn’t damage her somehow.

Ugh, the grass is really growing after all that rain. I didn’t want to mow this weekend. 

Why am I getting so many spam calls?! Someone needs to do something about this.

This monologue goes on and on, day after day, whether we want it to or not.

It’s exhausting, but it’s the mind doing the best it can to keep us safe.

Here’s the cool thing though: every single time we notice that we are distracted, and every single time we that we direct our attention to one thing – whether that thing is the breath, the sounds around us, a physical sensation, whatever – we strengthen our ability to stay present.

That’s what meditation is.

How to Get Started with Meditation 

Meditation is as simple as the above paragraph makes it out to be. There are also things we can do to make the habit easier to maintain through behavioral cues and good foundational practices.

Posture Tips for Effective Meditation 

Posture matters. You want a dignified posture and one that you can maintain for an extended time. Our spine holds our body upright, and we want to help it do its job. 

Sitting on a cushion or rolled-up blanket on the floor is helpful. You want to sit on the front 1/3 of the cushion or blanket so that your pelvis rolls forward. This position makes good posture much easier.

If you are sitting in a chair, make sure you aren’t leaning back in it, and make sure your feet are flat on the floor. A solid base is essential, especially as you meditate for longer and longer periods.

So: spine is straight, ears are over your shoulders, and your nose is over your navel. 

A dignified posture for a dignified practice.

Should You Keep Your Eyes Open or Closed?

What you do with your eyes is the subject of some debate. Some say close them. Some say they need to be open. Some say cap them. Some say do whatever you want.

 I tend to be in the third category for no reason other than I cannot keep my eyes open without them burning and watering.

The value of closing your eyes is that they don’t burn and water, and you may be less distracted by external things. 

The downside of keeping them closed is that the mind tends to get hyper when it is the center of attention, so getting distracted is easier. 

Keeping our eyes open also helps us remember that we aren’t retreating from the world but seeking to meet it head-on.

Ultimately, try both and do what you can do.

What Should You Do With Your Hands?

The hands also manage to generate some debate. Some people and traditions are fans of different hand postures called mudras. Some people believe they hold specific power. Others think they are helpful in holding focus and maintaining awareness.

Once again, I do not claim to know which of these two perspectives is correct, so I do not hold a strong opinion. Often, people prefer to let their hands rest in their lap, and I think this is fine. Try different things, and do what feels most helpful to focus and awareness.

How to Sit for Meditation

You may notice a trend emerging: there is debate about how to sit.

There are a few different ways to position your legs.

Some schools emphasize the ability to sit full lotus, and this seems to be the archetypal picture you always see of a “real” meditator: butt on a cushion, right heel on your left thigh and left heel on your right thigh. Full lotus is, most likely, the best way to sit, but I am not sure it’s possible for everyone.

Person sitting in meditation posture with eyes closed on a beachFull Lotus

After years of sitting, I still can’t get my legs in this position for any length of time. I’ve met people with short legs who can’t sit crisscross at all, so I can’t see full lotus being an option for them no matter how much yoga they do.

Breath-focused meditation technique illustrationHalf Lotus

A second position is called half-lotus, where you place the right ankle on the left thigh or vice-versa without trying to follow up with the other leg. This one has always felt unbalanced to me, and I strain my lower back trying to maintain this posture, but I know people who prefer it.

Illustration of a person sitting in a meditation posture.Modified Burmese

A third, and the position I use, is often called modified Burmese. It’s very much like sitting crisscross, but instead of stacking your legs on top of each other, you place them parallel, with the tops of your feet on the floor. 

I’ve found that I can comfortably maintain this posture for about as long as I want to without any pain or my feet falling asleep.

Lastly, you can use a chair. This works for a lot of people, but there are a few things you have to consider. 

You want to use a straight-backed chair, not your recliner. The ideas about a straight spine still apply. Sit so that that your feet are flat on the floor. Posture will be more and more important as you sit for longer periods. A stable base may be the only thing keeping you from tipping over.

Where Should You Meditate?

We’ve all seen the beautiful mediation rooms in magazines and movies. If you have one, awesome. 

Everyone else needs to focus on creating a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed. It is impossible to settle into meditation if we are waiting for our kids to bust in the door at any second or keep anticipating our roommate walking in.

In general, anywhere with a reasonable expectation of privacy for 20 minutes will do, and things like noise-canceling headphones and eye masks can make it all easier. I’d encourage you not to put too much effort into this, though. Meditation is about learning to accept the world exactly as it is. Putting too much effort into blocking everything out is counter-productive to this.

Create a quiet, clean spot to sit and get started.

Best Time to Meditate for Maximum Benefit

The best time to meditate is right now, although some people prefer different times of the day. The morning seems especially easy as the mind hasn’t started to rev up with all the day’s nonsense yet, but it might also be difficult if you aren’t a morning person.

A lot of people enjoy meditating in the evenings before bed, but others are too tired. 

Don’t let minor nit-picky considerations derail your practice. Experiment with different times and go with the ones you like the most. The one thing to avoid is scheduling it after eating. Digestion makes it a lot harder to concentrate. I know that sounds strange. I thought it was nonsense until I tried it.

 Don’t get too caught up on the when. Meditate when you can.

Final Thoughts: Why You Should Start Meditating Today 

We’ll dive into this topic in more depth over the next few weeks and months. It may seem strange at first, but meditation is a life-changing practice. We don’t know this until we try it because the mind has such a hold on us. It’s like a fish trying to understand the concept of water while living on the bottom of a lake.

It is fantastic to see how many of our problems are constructs of the mind. When we learn to watch this instead of being caught up in it, everything changes.

Give it a try.

You won’t regret it.

Still have questions? This FAQ section is here for you.

Frequently Asked Questions About Meditation

Q: What is meditation, and how does it work?

A: Meditation is the practice of training your attention and awareness to achieve greater focus, clarity, and emotional balance. It works by directing your attention to a specific object—such as your breath, a sound, or a mantra—and gently returning to that focus when your mind wanders. Over time, meditation strengthens your ability to stay present and reduces mental chatter.

Q: What are the benefits of meditation?

A: Meditation offers numerous physical, mental, and emotional benefits, including:

  • Reduced stress and anxiety by lowering cortisol levels
  • Improved focus and concentration by training the brain to stay present
  • Better emotional regulation by increasing self-awareness
  • Enhanced creativity and problem-solving through a calmer, clearer mind
  • Lower blood pressure and improved heart health
  • Better sleep quality by calming the nervous system

Q: How long should a beginner meditate?

A: Beginners should start with 5-10 minutes per day and gradually increase the duration as they become more comfortable. The key is consistency—it’s better to meditate for 5 minutes daily than 30 minutes once a week.

Q: What is the best meditation technique for beginners?

A: The simplest and most effective technique for beginners is breath awareness meditation. Sit comfortably, focus on your breath, and gently bring your attention back whenever your mind wanders. Other beginner-friendly techniques include:

  • Body scan meditation (focusing on sensations throughout the body)
  • Guided meditation (using audio or apps for guidance)
  • Loving-kindness meditation (focusing on cultivating positive emotions)

Q: Do I need to sit in a specific position to meditate?

A: No. While some people prefer cross-legged postures like full lotus or half-lotus, sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor is perfectly fine. The key is to maintain an upright spine for alertness and avoid slouching.

Q: Should I keep my eyes open or closed while meditating?

A: This depends on personal preference.

  • Closed eyes: Reduces external distractions but may lead to daydreaming.
  • Open eyes: Helps maintain alertness and prevents zoning out.
    Try both and see what works best for you!

Q: Can I meditate lying down?

A: Yes, but it’s easy to fall asleep while meditating in this position. If you want to meditate lying down, try:

  • Keeping your eyes open to maintain awareness
  • Using a firm surface instead of a bed
  • Practicing body scan meditation to stay engaged

Q: How do I know if I’m meditating correctly?

A: If you’re making an effort to focus on the present moment—even if your mind wanders frequently—you’re meditating correctly. The goal isn’t to stop thinking but to notice when your mind drifts and gently bring it back.

Q: What should I do if I can’t stop thinking during meditation?

A: This is completely normal! The mind is designed to think, and meditation isn’t about stopping thoughts—it’s about observing them without getting caught up in them. If you get distracted, simply:

  1. Acknowledge the thought without judgment.
  2. Gently return your focus to your breath or chosen object of meditation.
  3. Repeat the process as many times as needed.

Q: When is the best time to meditate?

A: The best time is whenever you can be consistent. However, some recommended times include:

  • Morning: Helps set a calm, focused tone for the day.
  • Before bed: Can promote relaxation and improve sleep.
  • During breaks: Midday meditation can reduce stress and refresh the mind.

Q: How long does it take to see results from meditation?

A: Some benefits—like reduced stress and increased focus—can be noticed within a few weeks of daily practice. Long-term benefits, like greater emotional resilience and improved mental clarity, develop over months or years.

Q: Do I need to meditate every day?

A: While daily meditation is ideal, even practicing a few times per week can have significant benefits. Consistency is more important than duration.

Q: What are the most common mistakes beginners make?

A: The biggest mistakes include:
❌ Expecting an empty mind instead of learning to observe thoughts
❌ Being too critical when the mind wanders
❌ Forcing a specific experience instead of letting it unfold naturally
❌ Thinking they need the “perfect” meditation space to start
❌ Quitting too soon before experiencing the benefits

Q: Can meditation help with anxiety and depression?

A: Yes. Research shows that meditation can:
✅ Reduce activity in the brain’s fear and stress centers
✅ Increase emotional resilience and self-awareness
✅ Improve mood regulation and reduce symptoms of depression
However, it’s not a replacement for therapy or medical treatment—it’s best used alongside professional care if needed.

Q: Is meditation a religious practice?

A: Meditation is used in many spiritual traditions, but it is not inherently religious. Many people meditate for secular benefits like stress relief, focus, and emotional well-being.

Q: What are the best meditation apps for beginners?

A: Popular apps with guided meditation sessions include:

  • Headspace (great for beginners)
  • Calm (focuses on relaxation and sleep)
  • Insight Timer (free guided meditations)
  • 10% Happier (meditation for skeptics)

Q: Can children or teens meditate?

A: Absolutely! Meditation can help kids improve focus, manage stress, and develop emotional awareness. Short, simple techniques like breathing exercises and mindfulness activities work best for younger meditators.

Q: Can I meditate while walking or doing daily activities?

A: Yes! These informal practices are called mindful meditation or walking meditation. You can practice by:

  • Paying full attention to each step and breath while walking
  • Washing dishes or eating mindfully, noticing every sensation
  • Being fully present during everyday moments without distractions

Q: What should I do if I get bored while meditating?

A: Boredom is part of the process—it means your brain is craving stimulation. Instead of resisting it:

  • Acknowledge the boredom without judgment
  • Refocus on your breath or chosen meditation anchor
  • Remind yourself that the goal is simply to observe, not to be entertained

Q: How do I build a daily meditation habit?

A: Tips to make meditation a consistent habit:
✔ Start small – just 5 minutes a day
✔ Attach it to a routine – after waking up or before bed
✔ Use a meditation app for reminders
✔ Find a meditation buddy for accountability
✔ Be patient – habits take time to build

Let’s Talk!

I help people recognize and seize the opportunities that are all around them. It’s my favorite thing. 

When Being Nice Isn’t Nice

by | Mar 16, 2021 | Uncategorized

When Being Nice Isn’t Nice

Nice is an icky word (having been a counselor for close to a decade now, I’ve learned that “icky” is often the only appropriate word for things).

Niceness, in general, can often be icky.


We use nice to describe things that aren’t good or great or memorable. We use it when we don’t want to be mean, but we don’t want to lie. It’s a perfect, middling, lukewarm word.


This is why we often choose being nice over actually being helpful or useful or doing anything at all. It’s an escape, and we embrace it.

Here’s the problem, though: being nice is often one of the least nice things we can do. There’s a reason for this. What we often call being nice is actually us taking the easy way out or being selfish without wanting to admit it.


The Problem with Niceness


Let’s say our friend has changed over the years to be less and less likable. They interrupt people, they are rude, and their hygiene has been slipping. It’s obvious something is wrong, but we, being the nice people we are, don’t say anything to them about it. We, in our niceness, remain friends with them, accepting all these new unpalatable traits.


Now let’s say you are a doctor. A person comes in with a variety of habits that are killing them. They don’t move enough, they smoke cigarettes, their diet is toxic, and they drink too much. They are unhealthy, but you are also a nice doctor, so you don’t say anything about it. Instead, you do as much as you can to make them comfortable and to allow them the highest quality of life they can have without changing.


The first scenario will seem plausible to most of us since we are nice people, but I hope that we all struggle with the second one, at least a little bit. It’s evident that niceness is not always the best choice and can be harmful.

But, you say, this isn’t a fair comparison. In the first situation we’re peers – we are friends. I have no business saying anything to them. In the second scenario, though, I am in a position of authority, the person is coming to me asking my opinion. I should be honest with them.


Why don’t we love our friend enough to tell him what his behavior is bringing to his door rather than watching his social life dwindle to nothing, though? Chances are, he recognizes that people are avoiding him and he may not be aware of exactly why. What is so nice about allowing people to engage in destructive behavior without being aware of it?


The Cruelty of Niceness


It’s hard to be honest with ourselves sometimes. We like to think that we do things out of altruism and selflessness because it keeps us comfortable. We don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. We don’t like confrontation. We don’t like the moments of uncomfortable silence after we say something that might be true but isn’t nice.


This is why we lie to people. We imply that we could get back together when we’re breaking up with them. We say a position may open up later when we know we aren’t going to hire them. We tell people that circumstances were unfair when they just didn’t measure up.


The problem with these supposed niceties is that they give people a sense of false hope, which might be more cruel than anything we could say to them. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen have a false sense of hope and optimism because someone didn’t want to have a difficult conversation with them. Instead, they let the person die a slow, lingering death waiting for the promised or implied next chance to come along.


The Magic of Honesty


Somebody once told me that I’m not the kind of counselor you send people to for a hug. If I’m honest, this bothered me a little bit at first. I want to be the nice, loving therapist that people look back on as a kind caregiver. I’m that sometimes, but I rarely find that the path to actual change and healing is easy or filled only with hugs.


The most significant and most important changes I’ve seen people make have always been predicated by some confrontation – either with another person, with themselves, or with the kind of counselor who doesn’t give you a hug right away.


I don’t know what it is about our culture that has led us to classify confrontation as a negative thing. I don’t think that anything in the history of the world has ever changed for the better without some confrontation. Women got the right to vote through confrontation. People addressed segregation and slavery through confrontation. There was a small confrontation involved in dealing with Hitler.


Outside of these large-scale confrontations are the tiny ones we engage in every day. We talk to our friend about standing us up. We talk to our boss about not getting the raise he promised us. We talk to our spouse about feeling neglected. These are all confrontations, and they are all necessary for things to change for the better.


On an even more intimate scale are the confrontations we have with ourselves. We realize that we’re drinking too much, and we decide to address it. We acknowledge that we’ve been staying up too late and that’s why we’re exhausted all the time, so we start going to bed earlier. We become aware that our ego is running amok, bringing a lot of stress and destruction into our lives, and we address this.

These are all confrontations, and they are all necessary.


As a counselor, a mentor, and a coach, I’ve realized that constructive confrontation in a healthy environment is one of the most important things we can bring into our lives. The desire to be nice, to protect ourselves and other people from confrontation, will always keep people (and ourselves) locked into unhealthy patterns of behavior.


Is Nice Really Nice?


Confrontation is important, but it can also be messy In general, two simple rules that worked for me:


Confront only because you care. Don’t make it about you.

Make sure the relationship is strong enough to bear the confrontation. It’s hard to be confronted, you need to have the relationship capital built up beforehand.

Confrontation is beneficial, but too much can crash things. Make sure your motives are trustworthy and that you are close enough to the person that will be able to hear what you have to say.


Nice isn’t always nice. Be honest with yourself about why you may be avoiding the challenging discussion and confront the people you love when necessary.

It’s not easy, but most worthwhile things aren’t.

Want more? I write a lot. I also have a podcast and post videos and mini-blogs on Instagram.

Lessons from 2020

by | Dec 31, 2020 | Uncategorized

Lessons from 2020

I don’t have a desire to do the whole end-of-the-year accomplishments thing in 2020. If you’ve followed the blog or podcast this year, or if you follow me on Instagram, you know that 2020 has not been as difficult for my family and me as it has for so many people.

I try to remain conscious of this privilege and how fortunate we are, and it doesn’t feel right to talk about all the things that went right when so many things have gone so wrong for so many people.

Instead, I wanted to talk a little bit about the things that I think 2020 has taught us.

Here they are:

  1. Busyness is Overrated
  2. Control is an Illusion
  3. Nothing is as Stable as it Seems
  4. Our Individualism has Become Pathological
  5. Reality Doesn’t Care About Ideology

1: Busyness is Overrated 

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again – I spent a lot of my life being a loser, and this is something that sticks with you. When I finally had the opportunity to do better, I was afraid that I would waste it, so I threw myself into my work.

A lack of discipline has been a problem throughout my life. When I moved to West Texas, I began reading because it seemed like that’s what smart people do. An interest in cryptozoology led me to an interest in the universe and quantum physics. This led me to a book called the dancing Wu Li Masters, which talked about the overlap between eastern philosophy and modern-day physics.

This all led me to learn about the samurai, and for the first time in my life, discipline seemed cool, and this changed everything. It helped me establish a lot of the habits that still serve me well. These days I am diligent in reading and learning, getting up early, going to bed at a specific time, and trying to take care of tasks when they need to be taken care of instead of when I feel like it.

This is all well and good, but over the years, it became pathological, and I took it overboard (as is my tendency). 2020 may be the year that the rise and grind/hustle culture dies, or at least shrinks. The pandemic thrust us into a situation where all the hustle and all the grind in the world couldn’t make things better, and might actually make them worse as we forced ourselves out of the house and into a plague-stricken society.

I don’t know that this is a terrible thing. Hustle is good, but we also need to understand when to take our hands off the wheel and let things play out as they play out. We tricked ourselves into thinking that we know a lot more than we do and that the idea of hustling and grinding is a good thing in and of itself. I’m leaving this in 2020.

2: Control is an Illusion 

I’m usually pretty good about recognizing how little control I have. One of the most frequent conversations I had with clients is about dividing everything into three categories: what we have complete control over, what we have conditional control over, and what we have no control over.

No control is the big one here. The weather, global events, other people, the processes of the universe, and other things of this scale are all things that impact our lives in a very real way but that we have no control over. Other people always fall into the category of no control as well.

Conditional control covers everything that we have some degree of influence over. I have control over what I eat so long as the supply lines don’t breakdown, and so long as I have the money to afford it. I have control over where I go so long as I don’t get kidnapped, my car is running, and the roads aren’t closed. I can influence other people, but their decisions are always outside my control.

The final category – complete control – comes down to one thing: we always have control over our response to all the things we have no control over. That’s it.

This all matters because every second that we spend focused on the things we cannot control is time we’re not spending on our response to those things or exercising our conditional control. This is a recipe for suffering.

2020 was a blow to our notion of control across the board. It was shocking to come face to face with how many things could go wrong, and how little we can do about it. For most of the world for most of the year, acceptance was the only path available. This is difficult for people. Even those with the financial and political power in our society found themselves at the mercy of many things that they could not do anything about.

They had more control than we did, but things like COVID and social unrest are not in anybody’s pocket. It’s important to acknowledge this so that we can put our attention where it matters, and so that we can cultivate acceptance for the things we cannot control.

3: Nothing is as Stable as it Seems 

If you had told me four years ago that a reality show host would be our president and would be tasked with leading us through the most challenging time in modern memory, I would have called you crazy.

If you had told me a year ago that things like Q-Anon, Flat Earth, and microchips in vaccines were going to be mainstream beliefs for a large number of people, I would have called you crazy.

If someone had predicted the amount of division and animosity between members of our society, including friends and family members, I would have had a hard time believing it, but all of these things have come to pass and now seem to be fixtures of our day-to-day lives.

We, especially here in the United States, take social and economic stability for granted. We live in one of the most prosperous countries with one of the longest times of peace (in our own country) in the history of the world. It may actually be the most prosperous and the longest streak of peace ever.

So far, we’ve always had peaceful transitions of power, and despite a long history of structural racism and the slow creep toward a police state, these things were under the surface and easy to ignore if we chose to. 2020 threw that out the window, and we had to come to terms with how volatile things are, and I think that many of us now have an awareness of how easily they can become much more volatile.

We need to keep this in mind – thinking that everything will return to normal is a bad idea. I’m not saying we should become doomsday preppers. I’m not saying it’s time to start arming ourselves and living in bunkers. But, we do need to be aware that the social system that we have taken for granted to the point of seeing it as an aspect of nature is fragile. This has to be obvious by now.

#4 Our Individualism has Become Pathological

I like to think I have a pretty rational view of humans. I don’t think they are evil, but I think we are all capable of evil things when the chips are down. I don’t idealize people, but I don’t vilify them either. People are people are people.

I’ve always struggled with the “rugged individualism” that America makes such a big deal about, but 2020 was the year where I found myself consistently and pervasively disappointed in the pathological individualism I saw in our society. Something as simple as wearing a mask in public became a life-or-death issue for many people, even though it could potentially save the lives of the people who are more vulnerable than us. How was this the hill we decided to die on?

The panic buying of essential products at the supermarket, comparing masks to the Holocaust, and our eventual attitude of being tired of being in a pandemic and going back to our day-to-day lives was baffling and disheartening.

Let me be clear: I’m not one of the people who things we could shut down entirely and have the government take care of us. Everything the government gives you is something the government can eventually take away, and this always becomes a tool of oppression.

That being said, there is a huge difference between the people who had to go to work to survive or to keep society functioning and the hordes of people going to bars, restaurants, and parties because they did not see themselves as being at risk of contracting Covid.

Talking to people from other countries is highlighted this to me, and they expressed shock at the callous and foolish behavior of their American counterparts. It was sad to see just how little we were willing to do for other people in our society, and this is an unsustainable way of behaving.

#5 Reality Doesn’t Care About Ideology

You can see the last point as a political statement, but I don’t think it is, and this highlights the last thing I’ll talk about here: it is strange that we have decided that the concepts, abstractions, and ideologies that we have created as humans transcend the laws of the natural world that we all live in.

It no longer seems like a stretch of the imagination to picture a group of people who decide that the sun, by disproportionality burning those with a fair complexion, is oppressive. In response, they refuse to wear sunscreen. Maybe they even decide to start going everywhere naked, just to exercise their right to behave like everyone else. The results are predictable, and a matter of cause and effect.

I remember seeing this kind of philosophy in action when I worked at a university. I watched one of my students walk out in front of one of the campus buses. Luckily, the driver was alert and slammed on the brakes. When I gave the student a hard time about it later, she told me that she “had the right of way.” That is the rule, but there are probably a lot of dead people who had the right of way.

There is a way the universe works, and human ideologies and philosophies and concepts are subservient to this. It doesn’t matter if you think that masks are an infringement on your rights – the coronavirus can be an infringement on your “right” to be alive (or someone else’s).

It does not matter if you are gathered in a group to celebrate Biden’s win, to exercise your right to sing Christmas songs in a crowded church, or to “own the libs” by doing a Trump Train conga line around a ballroom. Gravity impacts our body depending on our weight, the sun shines on everyone, and COVID-19 is an equal opportunity infector. It does not care what you believe about it.

Nature supersedes human ideas and beliefs, no matter how deeply attached to them we might be or how “right” they feel. Living in a world of ideas is a good way to get hit by a bus.

Wrapping Up

These lessons are not new or profound, but 2020 has highlighted them in unusual ways. I hope the year has not been crippling for you, your family, your friends, your community, or for us as a society, and I have a lot of hope looking forward to 2021.

What is your biggest takeaway from 2020?

Want more? I write a lot. I also have a podcast and post videos and mini-blogs on Instagram.

Your Complete Guide to Dealing with Difficult People

by | Nov 3, 2020 | Uncategorized


How Do We Deal with Difficult People


This is a topic I have spent a lot of time talking to people about over the past few years. I used to work as a counselor at a small private university. Having difficult conversations with difficult people would come up every year as the holidays approached, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. The college students struggled with going home to parents and talking about the things that different generations seem to have conflict over – politics, social issues, religion, and things like that.


I am writing this in 2020. Over the past four years, I have noticed that this conversation has expanded beyond the holidays to be a year-round concern for people. It has moved beyond our close family members to include coworkers, bosses, friends, acquaintances, and sometimes even that annoying person behind you in line at Walmart.


Difficult People in a Difficult Society


We have become increasingly divided as a society.

This can be attributed to several things.

The prime culprits seems to be the weaponization of social media, the echo chamber we are all able to live in by cultivating what information we receive, the ability we have to find people who agree with us all the time through different online groups and forums, and, a president who has been especially adept at using this division to further his own agenda.


I am uncomfortable laying the blame on Donald Trump like that, but I do not see a way around it. This is not a matter of Republicans or Democrats or conservatives or liberals, but an aspect of the character of the man himself. He has taken trolling to a new level. He tosses ideas out for public consumption regardless of whether or not they are true. When confronted, he throws his hands up, saying he was just thinking out loud. His most rabid and aggressive supporters have picked up on this kind of behavior and it has spread throughout our society.


Those opposed to Donald Trump play a significant role as well. I recently joined a new social media site that claims to be more about deep thinking and compassion than places like Facebook and Instagram, but I saw the exact same memes, tweets, and unsourced broadsides that I saw everywhere else. They just had a left-leaning agenda. As a society, our entire political discourse has devolved into us driving by and mooning each other out the car window, thinking that we have scored intellectual points in the process.


All of this together has made knowing how to have conversations with difficult people much more necessary. This blog post was born from asking people who followed me what would be most useful for me to write about. The question of how to handle difficult people in difficult situations was an overwhelming number one.


Where We are Headed


Our purpose here is to explore ways to make living in such divisive times more manageable in a general sense, while also exploring concrete tactics to deal with people who do not have any respect for the things we believe.

To begin, we will work to make sure we are not part of the problem by cultivating insight into the things that we do that might make difficult situations worse. After this, we will try understand why people do the things they do and why they behave the way they behave, and we will talk about establishing boundaries to help protect ourselves and the people we love from the most toxic people. To wrap things up, we will look at what it means to walk away from a relationship with someone who has no respect for us or our boundaries.


Dealing with Difficult People: A Disclaimer


I should start with a few statements that establish my overall beliefs about other people. You may or may not agree with them, and that is okay.


We need to choose relationship over being right. That being said, we should not necessarily maintain relationship with everybody in our life. This includes family members and people we have been friends with since we were very young.


Unqualified compassion is a necessary component of life. However, compassion does not mean that we do not have boundaries or that we let people run over us. Compassion and weakness are not the same thing.


Having your feelings hurt is not a significant offense against you, but someone who continually hurts your feelings and shows no real remorse for it should not be in your life.


We have to clean up our side of the street before looking at anyone else’s.


It is essential that we have conversations with people who believe very different things than us.


More than anything, we are all in this together and about 99% of us have more in common than we have to fight about.


Lastly, and this is very important, you can understand where someone is coming from and still not agree with them. There’s this strange thing going on in the cultural narrative right now where we label anybody who disagrees with us as baseless and insane. This makes conversation impossible, and that means that things are only going to get worse for all of us.

Everyone is Doing Their Best with What they Have. Even Difficult People.


There’s another bizarre idea floating around in our heads right now. It is the idea that there are people out there who are knowingly and intentionally doing the wrong thing.

I first encountered this idea growing up in the Christian Church. I was told there was this evil figure, Satan, who hated everything and everyone and only wanted to sow misery and sadness and death and destruction in the world. Even as a child, this didn’t make sense because I did not understand what he was getting out of this. Did it bring him joy to make people unhappy?

This confusion solidified my first year in college when I took a philosophy of religion course. We discussed the idea of a perfect god versus a perfect devil. The idea of a perfect God makes sense because, being the good guy, God could do good for the mere sake of doing good.

The problem with the idea of a perfect devil is that for Satan to do these bad things, he must enjoy them, which means he’s not perfectly evil because he is doing something to bring joy to the world, if only for himself. The idea that someone does evil for the sake of evil doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially when we are talking about humans.


One of my core beliefs is that everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they have available to them. As humans, I do not think we can do something without a motivating factor, and that motivating factor must be one we see as beneficial to us. It may be skewed or disordered, but it makes sense to the person.


This is important because if we think we are dealing with irrational, insane people, there is no way we will ever be able to have a conversation with them. Conversations with people who believe differently than us are critical if we are ever going to grow as people and get out of this mess. Look for the reasons someone believes what they believe.


Everyone’s Beliefs Make Sense to Them


If an idea does not make sense to someone, they will not believe it. This doesn’t mean that what they believe is right or true, only that it makes sense to them according to the life they live and the things they see around them. This is especially problematic in our current situation where we don’t have a news media as much as we have talking heads with an agenda posing as news anchors.


There’s the added complication of social media and its debilitating effect on our cultural narrative. We no longer value expertise or objectivity but instead give credibility to something because it is clever or because it made us laugh.

When you think of things like character limits or an image-based presentation such as that of Instagram, we see a situation where people say very little of substance, but present it as the truth. Even worse is the fact that we can cultivate our feeds and the news we consume to only give us things we agree with, so we are getting shallow little bites of things that do not even challenge the pre-existing ideas that make sense to us. Understand that we are all oppressed by this system.


The Exploitation of Difficult People


It may be useful to substitute the word “scared” for “difficult”. On both sides of the political spectrum, the people I see being the most outrageous, aggressive, and obtuse seem to be very scared.

On the right, you have people who fear government tyranny through gun control, socialism, and the slow wearing away of values and ideals that they believe have served us very well for centuries.

On the left, you have people who fear government tyranny through militias, fascism, and the slow wearing away of social and political freedoms that they believe have steered us very well for centuries.


These people are very vocal about these fears, but they couch them in anger and sarcasm because fear is a vulnerable feeling, and we don’t like to express it. There are plenty of people in our public consciousness who are exploiting these fears and making scared people turn into difficult people.

Because of the echo chamber we’ve created, these people feel validated in their beliefs and are becoming more scared and, therefore, more difficult. It is an unfortunate trend, and I am not sure it will end anytime soon because it has worked out very well for the people who have taken advantage of it.


Why All the Sympathy for the Difficult People?


Here’s my deal: I don’t have a desire to see people get owned or humiliated. I don’t want to see one side lose. I know it might feel good for a moment, but it’s not helpful in any real way.

This isn’t necessarily out of altruism. We are all on the same bus, and we all die if it goes off a cliff. It is crucial that we take the time to understand where other people are coming from to have better conversations with them and help steer them in a more productive direction.


Anger and defensiveness are pretty much automatic conversation enders, but if we can get down to the things that a person fears, we might be able to actually help them, and enough of this can change the society we are living in.

The cool thing about fear Is that it cannot be present unless there is also something they love very much: maybe they love freedom, maybe they love their family, maybe they love their job, maybe they love this country, maybe they love the LGBTQIA community, maybe they love animals, or they love the planet. It is good to love things, but love can flip over to fear very quickly, especially when a charismatic, influential person tells them the things they love are under threat.


Everyone is suffering, and people express this suffering in different ways. It is hard to express suffering constructively in the first place, but it is even harder when you have a thousand different kinds of media working together to turn the suffering into anger and divisiveness.

Cut people some slack. Their response might surprise you.


Insight: Are You One of the Difficult People?


I look for one thing when somebody shows up in my office looking to improve their life: insight, or the ability to look at themselves, their beliefs, and their own behavior with some degree of objectivity. The degree to which this is present is the degree to which they have the capacity to change. We cannot change without the presence of insight.


We must examine where our own opinions come from and take a minute to look at how attached to them we are. One of the uncomfortable truths of life is that our opinions are much more subjective than we think they are. We all like to believe that our opinions are based on fact and long bouts of sifting and sorting through information to arrive at what we believe.

When it comes down to it though, we tend to favor the things that are familiar to us. In fact, hearing a particular perspective tends to shift our opinion towards that perspective. This is why we love such shitty songs. We hear them over and over on the radio, they become familiar and seem like they must be good because everyone must love them enough for them to be on the radio.

Ask yourself why you believe what you believe. What made you choose your position out of the many thousands of positions available on just about every topic?


Ask yourself what it would take to change your opinion on something. If the answer is nothing, then you might be as dogmatic and rigid as the people who are driving you crazy.


Cognitive Biases and Difficult People


I did a short series on Instagram about cognitive biases because we all have them, and they influence the way that we see the world. For instance, the Dunning Kruger effect tends to make the least capable people very confident in the things that they do, while the IKEA effect makes us love things we have created more than we would if somebody else had built them for us.


One of the more dangerous cognitive biases is called Fundamental Attribution. We tend to see other people’s poor behavior and poor choices as evidence of their flawed character while giving ourselves context for our bad behavior.

For instance, you see another customer snap at the kid who’s ringing up their groceries. You assume they’re an asshole, forgetting that you did the exact same thing last week but decided to cut yourself some slack because you didn’t sleep well the night before.

Cognitive biases are not harmful in and of themselves. If you think about the amount of information the brain is expected to take in and process every second, it makes sense that it is going to use some shortcuts to save time and energy. They only become a problem when we allow them to sway our judgment on things too often, or we treat other people poorly because of them.


Cognitive biases steer us toward trusting people who look like us or who think like us. If we have been successful or life has been good to us, we tend think that the status quo is automatically good.

None of these things make you a bad person. These are just things that we all need to recognize about ourselves, especially when dealing with difficult people. It is helpful to remember that they are laboring under the same kind of cognitive biases we are. It is hard to blame somebody for something that they don’t even know is there.


Difficult People, Difficult Emotions


It is strange to me, but this next idea is often unpopular with people: while you are not responsible for the emotions someone else triggers, you are responsible for every single thing that happens after the initial arising.


Let’s break this down.

This isn’t about kids being so soft these days or millennials being snowflakes or anything like that. Everyone is a snowflake about something, we just tell ourselves that our thing really matters and is worth getting bent out of shape over.

Taking responsibility for your emotions is the path to freedom. The most challenging people we deal with have recognized that if you can knock somebody off their emotional center, you have control of them. This is why abusive and manipulative people resort to harsh language and disrespect so quickly. It gives them control of the situation.


It is not any fun to feel anxious or afraid or angry or defensive, and we need to understand that once those things are present in a conversation, that conversation is going off the rails. When they are present in the other person, that person is going off the rails, and we are about to get ourselves caught up in a very unpleasant situation.


Emotions don’t mean all that much in and of themselves though. If you think about it, emotions start off as a simple energy somewhere in the body – fear seems to manifest in the chest, anxiety in the stomach, things like that. When we can learn to allow them to remain as energy, they come and they go pretty quickly.

The problem arises when the mind takes that simple energy and frames it in a way as to turn it into an emotion. This gives the mind something to think about. It thinks about the activating event and keeps that emotion present. Emotions are like stray dogs; they only stick around if you feed them.


Learn to watch your inner response to things that are happening, and as much as possible, stay out of the way of the energy when it arises. This will take one of the primary cards out of the hands of the trolls.


You Don’t Have to Deal with Difficult People


This might be the most frequent exercise I do with clients: I ask them to list the things they have to do. Most of the time, people list things like feed their kids, pay taxes, go to work – the basics of life in an industrialized society.

They start to walk these back to more and more fundamental things once I point out that they don’t have to do any of those things: we feed our kids because we love them or at least don’t want to deal with Child Protective Services. We pay our taxes because we don’t want to go to prison. We go to work so that we have the money to pay our bills.

All of these things are choices. They may be coerced, but they are still choices. If I were to walk outside today and somebody puts a gun to my head and says “your wallet or your life,” I still have a choice in that situation.


This is important because we often feel that we have to do things that we are choosing to do, including maintaining relationships with the difficult people. There is literally nobody on the planet that you have to have a relationship with. Even if you are a prisoner, you don’t have to have a relationship with the guard who tries to talk to you. You can just not respond and leave everything one-sided. That’s not a relationship; that’s someone talking to themselves.


This is important to remember because for every difficult person you deal with, there is a reason you are choosing to do so. When we don’t own this, we start to feel disempowered at best and sorry for ourselves at worst. There’s only one thing we all have to do, and that is die someday. Everything else in between is a choice, and that’s where our power lies.

Strategies for Difficult People


Let’s talk about boundaries. We have different boundaries with different people. Those closest to us, like our spouses, immediate family, and even super close friends, have a different set of boundaries than that one checker at the grocery store who we talk to every time we go shopping but aren’t even sure what their name is. This seems pretty obvious, but it is something that we often don’t put enough time and energy and intentionality into.


There are three types of boundaries: rigid, diffuse, and flexible. Rigid boundaries are like razor wire where nobody gets past. Diffuse boundaries are like a line spray-painted on the ground that anyone can step over. Flexible boundaries tend to adapt to the situation at hand. Flexible boundaries are the healthiest, and they are what we need to aim for.


The crucial thing with here is to understand that your boundaries are your boundaries. Nobody gets to set them for you. This is important for difficult people because one of the first things they will challenge are our boundaries. They will use guilt, manipulation, and appeal to all sorts of things, such as how long you’ve been friends or things they’ve done for you, to nullify and ignore your boundaries.


When we are conscious about our boundaries, when we set them intentionally, it makes it easier for us to stick to them because we have a reason for saying yes or no to people.

Saying “No”


One of the simplest and most effective strategies when dealing with difficult people is to learn to say no and to do so without qualification and without explanation if need be. We are taught to feel guilty for saying no in our society, which leaves the door wide open for the difficult people. Often, they know that they can bear discomfort more easily than we can, so they’re willing to lean on the awkwardness of a situation to force our hand and get what they want.


One of the main mistakes I see people make in saying no is that they overexplain. The more words we use, the more we give the difficult person to twist and manipulate and turn around on us.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this post emerged from questions people had asked me about how to deal with difficult people during such tumultuous social and political times. When it comes to political discussions, saying no to people might look something like this:


I don’t want to talk about politics with you.


I value our relationship, and every time we talk about this subject it makes me like you less, and I don’t want that to happen.


Can we talk about something else? I don’t enjoy having this discussion with you.


I don’t agree with you, and I know you don’t agree with me, and I am OK with that.

I would rather not talk about this anymore.


As you can see, we don’t have to be unkind to be firm. One of the biggest mistakes many of us make is that we wait until we are angry to draw boundaries. When we try to do this, we are not operating out of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for all the best parts of being human, so there is almost no way that it will go well.

As I mentioned above, monitor your emotions. When you start to notice anger, fear, resentment, or defensiveness arise, step away by drawing boundaries. The longer you wait to do it, the longer you train the other person that it is OK to have this discussion with you.

When you wait until you are angry to draw boundaries, you are also giving the other person something to use against you. They will believe that you are just angry at the moment, and they will not take your boundary seriously.

Be kind, but be firm.


Walk Away


I would like you to picture a dartboard. In the center you have the bullseye, and then you have rings moving out from there. Look at your relationships like this. The bullseye is the people who are the closest to you, the people who would always be there for you, and you would always be there for them. This is usually your spouse, your children, maybe your parents, or a few very close friends.


As we move out, the relationships become less close and less familiar: close friends, friends, Coworkers, acquaintances, etc., until we get to the outer ring where the people we know but we don’t really know reside. Think of that clerk we mentioned. You may talk to them, they may know a little bit about your life, but they aren’t anyone who’s ever been in your house.


The final ring is actually off the target. I call this exile, but you can call it whatever you want.

This is reserved for the much more drastic violations of relationship where we have no contact with a person any longer. In general, there’s no way back from exile. If someone’s done something wrong enough to get themselves there, you need to think long and hard before allowing them back into your life.


We all instinctively understand that there are different levels of relationship with different boundaries with different people. Still, I don’t know that we consciously decide where people fall into this. For some reason, when it comes to friends, we don’t move them further out in the circles even when their behavior deserves it.


Now let me be clear: I am not saying that when someone makes a mistake they get bumped. I am saying that we need to reassess our closeness with people when they consistently disrespect us, disrespect our beliefs, or disrespect our boundaries. It’s bizarre that we don’t do this with friends. We do it with people we are dating, but when I mention breaking up with a friend, people look at me like I am crazy.


For some reason, we wait for a drastic event to make these changes. If your best friend slept with your wife, they would both get moved outward on the target, maybe even into exile. It is similar to waiting until we are angry to draw our boundaries; we aren’t using our best brain to do this.

Move people around the rings before things get drastic. It might give you a chance to preserve the relationship. When the cousin you’ve been close to or the friend you talked to two or three times a week recognizes that you’re putting up new boundaries with them, it allows them to address the behavior that caused it. If they choose not to address the behavior, then you know that you’ve moved them correctly.


Difficult People: Wrapping It All Up


We are always going to have difficult people in our lives. There’s nothing we can do about this, and I wonder if it will only worsen due to the nature of our society these days. Social media, biased news, and the ability to cultivate an echo chamber online are all toxic things, and they don’t seem like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.


We can understand where someone is coming from, we can have all the love and compassion in the world for why they believe what they believe, and still draw boundaries with them. Not only is this possible, but it is also important and necessary. Do your best to understand why people believe what they believe, but don’t let this discount the need for boundaries and clear expectations of how you want to be treated.


Be conscious about the role people play in your life, and how much of your time, energy, and mental space they are allowed to have. If someone is not honoring these things, it is time to reevaluate your relationship with them. Do this intentionally and with purpose.


You deserve to have loving, affirming relationships that challenge you to be better. You’re the only one that can make sure this happens in your life, don’t ignore the responsibility.

Want more? I write a lot. I also have a podcast and post videos and mini-blogs on Instagram.