Who do you fight with?
“She’s so selfish! He’s such a jerk!”
Who do you fight with? Who is the one person who can set you off—or at least really get under your skin?
What do you have to say to them?
How do you judge them?
(Even if only in your head?)
What is the recurring thought that triggers this anger or annoyance? Find the lesson in this thought and it will be your fastest teacher.
Get really specific about it.
Not just, “She’s selfish.” I know you have more to say than that!
How is she selfish?
Why is she like that?
What exactly does she need to do to fix herself?
You know you have these answers.
She’s so selfish.
She only ever thinks about herself.
She doesn’t care how her actions affect others.
She just does whatever she wants.
She should be more considerate.
Write them all down, then turn them around. See how these answers are actually your own hidden wisdom—for yourself.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you turn it around onto yourself in exactly the same way.
If the example above resonates for you, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re selfish. (Although you might be silently judging yourself as such, and it’s worth looking into.)
It might mean the opposite—that you could stand to think about yourself a little more! Is it time for you to start doing more of what you want?
Another turnaround is: Maybe she’s not selfish. What are some other reasons a person might act that way? What if she’s trying to protect herself from something? How does that thought change your perspective?
The point is, there’s nothing random about the people who drive us crazy. Their behavior annoys us so aggregiously for a reason.
And our best advice for them often holds the key to our biggest barrier—the thing keeping us from leveling up in our own growth.
At a minimum, it shows you the only way out of your suffering.
Because that person is not going to change.
Or at least, you sitting there stewing, or lecturing them, isn’t going to make them change.
The turnaround points you back the only thing you can actually do anything about—yourself.
Want to learn how to stop letting them trigger you?
I first learned this concept from Byron Katie and Naomi Aldort in 2007. It was transformative for me, and I quickly integrated it into my life, parenting, and coaching. I’ve since learned it is a variation of commonly used coaching and therapeutic frameworks that has roots in Stoicism and eastern traditions like Buddhism, Taoism.
There’s more to it—a little more inquiry, baseline levels of humility, lots of self-compassion, strong emotional regulation skills. I’m a Life Coach, not a therapist. If you haven’t had sufficient experience in therapy, I may refer you there before diving too far into this with you.