The Rules of People

RULE 80

There’s only one person you can change

Some difficult people really aren’t your problem. You encounter them occasionally, or maybe they aren’t difficult that often. Others might be tricky a lot of the time, and they might be your boss or your father or your own child. Not so easy to avoid.

The following Rules cover a variety of types of difficult people. Simply understanding the person can help. And there are some strategies you can use to make encounters with them easier. But you must recognise one key thing – you can’t change other people, as we saw in Rule 12. They will still be difficult in the situations that push their buttons. You might, if everything goes well, eventually train them to behave differently around you. For example, ...