Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy Read Online Free PDF

Freudian belief that it all came down to good mothers and bad mothers. Good moms were able to raise good kids. Bad moms weren’t. However, matching theory debunked that notion. Psychologists now know that much parenting success is simply due to the degree to which parent and child personalities are compatible. A gregarious mom, for example, may be driven batty by an introverted child who is shy, sensitive, and clings to her when confronted by others, regardless of whether those people are friends or strangers. Unless the mom is extraordinarily sensitive and evolved, she will spend her child’s life trying to change an introvert into an extrovert. One of life’s greatest challenges is to let the people around us be who they are. This becomes even more difficult if we work with people whose personalities do not match up well with our own. Part of our dilemma also may relate to what psychologist Carl Jung called the shadow. His theory (vastly oversimplified here) is that every person has strengths, or what some call our
    “light side,” and weaknesses, or what he called “the shadow,”
    and what others have called our dark side. Most of us lead with our light side and try to hide, deny, and/or repress our dark side. Frequently, in life, we find ourselves engaged in mirroring, which means that we find others who reflect our own
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    02.   What the Hell Is Your Problem? (Maybe It’s You) repressed dark side. That reflection is so personally troubling that we respond with annoyance or anger.
    What is the solution to this? It’s to uncover our own dark and light sides and find healthy ways to express them (such as conversations with friends; therapy; or artistic endeavors), while acknowledging that everyone has dark and light sides, which may simply be a very bad match for ours. If we line up our dark side with someone else’s, particularly in a work environment, clashes are utterly predictable. But, you may protest, the person who is annoying you has totally gone over to the dark side. He has become the Darth Vader of your work group, without a single redeeming quality. I’ve got to challenge you on that. Even the original Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies had his surprisingly good points. He was originally Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker’s father, and he was one of the good guys. He went over to the dark side to save Luke’s mother, became Darth Vader, forgot who he really was and then, at the end, became good again to save Luke from the evil Emperor Palpatine, but he was mortally wounded and died after gazing upon his son’s face for the first and only time.
    I must admit that George Lucas’ zigs and zags in the series sometimes lost me, but his underlying message rings true: We never know what others have been through in their lives or what they’re currently experiencing. Almost every person has goodness within that we can tap if we dig deep enough. Just a glimpse of that can keep us going in our quest to figure out how to work with each person productively.
    In rare cases, a matching problem is so bad that there is no choice but to walk away (see Chapter 17). However, this is a last resort and one you shouldn’t take until you’ve tried many, many other solutions! Quitting your job because you don’t like
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    stop  Pissing Me Off!
    your colleagues is an expensive solution—financially, professionally, and emotionally. Why am I insisting that you try so hard to work with a person you perceive as particularly monstrous? Because every workplace has them. You can keep changing jobs to avoid difficult people, but you never know where they’ll pop up again. Learning how to work with challenging people ranks right up there with technical jobs skills. Trust me on this one. You’ll use these techniques throughout your working career, no matter on what planet you land. difficult people versus difficult Behavior
    Before you can deal with the difficult coworker at