Post written by Dharini Woollcombe.

How to be Inspired by Frustrating People:

  1. Identify a person who bugs you and rubs you the wrong way.
  2. Take a deep breath. Take a few.
  3. Observe, take note and be inspired.

———

I was shaking my head on the way home after a somewhat harrowing day. Why me? Why oh why do I have to be in the midst of these crazies? Okay, they’re not crazies, they are really challenging people who give me the crazies! These are people who rub me the wrong way and with whom my patience just dries up. They are usually demanding in some way, and always exhausting.

I couldn’t understand what role these people might possibly play in my life, other than being the cause of a premature coronary or some serious, stress-related health issue. Just as I was considering changing my identity and relocating, it dawned on me that perhaps there was a gift in here somewhere. Difficult people might be a gift? Right.

But you see, because of them we are actually able to clearly see what happens in the human psyche and within human relationships.

A difficult person has a dominating aspect(s) in their character. This colors everything they do and say, and clearly affects those they come in to contact with (for better or for worse.) The awakening is that these people have these magnified aspects of personality, which enables us to see, study and perhaps understand why they are the way they are and how they (dys)function in the world.

What a gift! What a way to study character, to contemplate psychological development and increase understanding of the human condition: all things helpful in creating characters, and understanding ourselves better. And of course the more we understand ourselves, the more we can offer ourselves in our acting work.

These people are walking psychological experiments all for the taking. They give us the opportunity to really see what happens in the human psyche and within human relationships. What other opportunity is there for studying someone so fascinating and so complex?

So invite them in, I say, and study away.
Besides which, this just might make them a teeny bit easier to deal with.