Ignoring someone who is bullying you

Don’t ever ignore a bully. Ever.  Except when …

What has this got to do with leadership? Everything. Leadership is about leading people. Not fake imaginary people. Real people. Real people with real personalities and real issues and real emotional baggage. In short, it means leading flawed people who may or may not behave “optimally” all the time.

To do this well, you need to know how to deal with jerks. Because, some people are. You also need to recognize when you are being a jerk. Because – seriously – we all have our moments. Best to be honest about it.

So, let’s get to this. Ignoring a bully almost never works. What you need to do is not reward them. This is almost always best done through direct action.  Sometimes not rewarding a bully looks A LOT like ignoring them, but that’s not what you are actually doing and the difference matters.

Ignoring a bully and hoping for the best isn’t a strategy. Strategically not rewarding a bully – is a strategy. All things being equal – having a strategy tends to work better than just hoping for the best. Bonus if your strategy is based on science and best practices that are actually best practices and not just wishful thinking.

Taking a Strategic Approach to Bullying

Moving on. When you are strategic, you can strategically choose to not engage. Or to engage in a way that doesn’t engage.  Knowing what to do when will help you not be a jerk to people you think are being a jerk to you. Which means, you are less likely to be part of the problem.

The trick – knowing what to do when. That requires a bit of knowledge of how behaviors are shaped and formed so that YOU can get better control over YOUR responses to other people so that YOU not only aren’t adding fuel to the fire, you are putting out the fire, like the professional you claim to be.

While I can’t teach you everything I know about it here in this blog post what I can tell you is this.

1. Don’t ignore a bully. Just stop rewarding them. There are multiple ways to do this.  Ignoring them is one possibility but it’s rarely the best – the best option is to issue a delta – a signal that what they did wasn’t ok without being a jerk about it.
2. Be consistent. Once you stop rewarding the other person is likely to get worse. That’s fine, it’s part of the process. Just keep not rewarding them whenever they act in a way you don’t like.
3. Be compassionate. With yourself and with them. In most cases, they aren’t actually jerks. They were just responding to a difficult situation or stress in an inappropriate way and when you stop reacting as if they are a horrible person, they stop acting horribly. 
4. If they really are horrible people, you being a good person will help you deal with it more effectively than if you sink down to their level.

To learn more practical skills – check out my continuing education programs

https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Don’t let past wrongs keep you from enjoying your future.

Not everyone is nice. Don’t let the jerks of the world keep you from living life fully.

It would be nice if everyone was nice. If no one every bullied or put you down. If everyone helped you instead of competing with you.  That would be nice and it would make life a lot easier.

But not everyone is nice and not everyone is capable of being nice and some people will compete with you and beat you.

If you want to enjoy your life, you need to figure out how to make sure that the jerks of the world don’t prevent you from reaching your potential. You need to make sure that the wrongs that have been done to you in the past stay in the past so that they don’t affect your present or your future.

In short, coping skills for dealing with adversity are a basic life skill. We all need to learn how to cope with:

• Broken Hearts
• Death, dying and grief
• Bullying
• Not getting your way or what you want
• Jealousy
• Money management skills
• People not being responsible

and more.

We also need to learn how to not compound our problems and make things worse.  That’s a tall order. But it’s not as hard as you might think.

The reason Humanists keep trying to teach the world critical thinking is because critical thinking helps us cope with the difficulties we encounter more effectively.

All of the problems I listed above are problems. Problems that need to be solved. What’s the best way to solve a problem? By thinking about it. Sure, you can run on instinct and hope for the best, but we Humanists actually want to solve our problems. Hoping for the best isn’t enough. Not when we can take constructive action to make things better.

If you want to cope better, you need to learn how to think better about your problems. I can help with that. Check out my “Living Made Simpler” online course and my book – The Humanist Approach to Happiness.

Dealing with an annoying co-worker – humanistically

The single best way to deal with an annoying co-worker is by cultivating compassion for them, followed by a commitment to be professional even when it’s hard.

Your coworker is who they are. You might find them annoying, but so what. You are a professional.  Your job is to figure out how to treat your co-worker with the respect they deserve. After all, you are annoying to others too and you expect to be treated with respect. Don’t you. No one is not annoying. Some people are just more annoying than others.

The next time you feel annoyed, remind yourself, this person is a person and is flawed and may not be able to help it. And then remind yourself that you have your moments too. Feel sorry for them, think about how you would want to be treated in those moments when you haven’t been your best, and actively reach out to your coworker in a genuinely kind and professional way. You may be surprised to find that their annoying behavior was actually in response to your annoying behavior. It happens a lot.

If you change and stop being so judgmental and obviously annoyed, your coworker may be less stressed around you and if they are less stressed, their annoying habits that they manifest when stressed, won’t occur.
So again, consider that you might be part of the problem. Consider your coworker with the compassion you reserve for the people you consider fully human and commit yourself to behaving professionally regardless of how other people act. In other words, be kind. It’s not all about you.

Let It Be

Allow others to be who they are, even if who they are annoys you.

You aren’t going to get along with everyone. Nor should you expect to. It would be nice if everyone got along but we are all too different. We have different ideas, different experiences, different agendas, different knowledge, and different personalities. We are all different.

Mostly, those differences are a good thing, but they can also be annoying and frustrating, especially when we are trying to get something done and someone as a different opinion.

Beyond that it is also possible that the basic way someone acts can annoy you. Maybe they talk too loud or have an annoying habit that drives you up the wall. It doesn’t matter what it is, if you are to maintain your sanity and deal with them productively, you have to find some way to deal with your annoyance.

I do this by accepting that the other person is who they are. There is a reason they behave as they do and believe the things they do even if I don’t understand it or I think they are wrong.

Most of the reason why we get stressed out and annoyed is because we want them to stop. The question we have to ask ourselves is, would it be beneficial to them to stop, or would it just benefit me. Because if it is just me, then I need to keep it to myself and allow them to be who they are. The problem isn’t with them, it’s with me.

The next question is, assuming it would benefit them to stop, because it is interfering not just with our relationship but with others as well is this – are they capable of or even interested in changing? If so, helping them to learn how to tweak their behaviors slightly would be helpful. If not, then it would be pointless.  How do you know which it is? By approaching them politely and compassionately in a spirit of helpfulness. If you are rebuked and they aren’t interested, let it be.

You can’t change other people. You can make suggestions, but ultimately, they are the ones who have to live with the consequences of their actions and if they are fine with the consequences of being annoying, let it be.

If you are waiting for the annoying people of the world to go away before you can find peace, you are going to wait a very long time. Instead of trying to change other people, focus on the fact that you aren’t as perfect or as wonderful as you should be either. Work on improving yourself and learn how to calm your mind and find peace even amongst the most annoying of people, you will be a better happier person.

To help you with your meditations on this subject, here are The Beatles with Let it Be