Ways Intelligent People Deal With Difficult and Toxic People

Ways Intelligent People Deal With Difficult and Toxic People

Being intelligent doesn’t mean you can’t get yourself into trouble with difficult people, but it does give you the advantage of knowing how to deal with them better than others who are less intelligent and more easily manipulated by toxic people. Here are five smart ways to deal with difficult and toxic people without being dragged down to their level. These strategies may not work every time, but they will certainly help you maintain your self-respect and keep these toxic people from ruining your life or career in the process.

 1) Accept that some people are difficult

Many intelligent people waste a great deal of energy trying to change, fix or avoid difficult people. But sometimes what you can't fix must be accepted. When you accept that some people are difficult and learn to take care of yourself in their presence, they have less power over you, particularly if their behaviour is truly beyond your control. Some people may never change, but at least they no longer have power over you. Not being able to change someone's behaviour is better than enabling it!

 

2) There are also reasons why they act like this

It is not a popular fact but intelligent people indeed tend to be smarter, creative, and curious about everything around them. They want to learn new things and want to improve themselves constantly. Because of their innate curiosity about everything around them, some people may interpret their behaviour as a threat to them or something they are not comfortable with. If you are so smart why can’t you keep your mouth shut? Why do you have to point out other people’s mistakes all time? Why can’t you just let others be instead of trying to change everyone into someone they are not? This is how many toxic people talk when they deal with intelligent individuals who try to express themselves at work or outside of work.

 

3) Don’t look for faults in yourself

When people say bad things about you, it’s easy to internalize those comments. Don’t let that happen! Instead of looking for faults in yourself, look for problems with your critics. Are they insecure? Do they have a toxic personality? Are they just trying to get a rise out of you? Acknowledge their feelings—don’t invalidate them, but find ways to understand why someone is coming at you like that. If a co-worker is always undermining your ideas or jockeying for more power, maybe they're just insecure in their position within your company. Perhaps an acquaintance has been spreading rumours about you—are they trying to make themselves feel better by putting others down?

 

4) Don’t take things personally

It’s easy to feel personally attacked when someone takes a stab at you. While there are certainly some people out there who only have your personal best interests in mind, many will attack you just because they’re feeling down on their own lives. A challenging co-worker may take it out on you because he fought with his wife that morning. An upset client may lash out because she lost her job last week. So before assuming someone is purposely attacking you, remember to keep things in perspective: you probably have much more control over your emotions than she does!

 

5) Get away from toxic people if you can

Some people are just toxic. For whatever reason, they bring out our worst side, make us crazy or otherwise annoy us to no end. While cutting toxic people out of your life is rarely an option (and if it is, you probably won’t miss them much), you can still distance yourself from those types of personalities to protect your mental health. Whether you have a toxic boss, coworker or friend, try to avoid social situations where you know these sorts of people will be present. This can help keep your bad moods in check when you otherwise would have exploded on them (or had them explode on you).

 Thank you for reading.