Every now and then, you’ll find yourself connected with someone who just drives you up the wall. There may be any number of reasons you can’t get away from this person for the time being.
Or maybe you’ve gotten away, but you run into them from time to time, and they zap your energy. Soon you find yourself spending inordinate amounts of time grumbling to yourself about all the things they do that make you nuts.
Or maybe you don’t see them at all anymore, but you still spend a lot of time grousing about the way they are, or fuming over something you think they did to you in the past. Usually, this is someone you once had a close relationship with.
When this kind of thing happens, you can be certain this person is in your life or in your mind for a reason: there is something you need to learn from them before you can put the relationship to rest.
For starters, sit down and spend some time thinking about what it is this person does that gets on your nerves. Make a list of the qualities or habits or behavior patterns that bother you. Then look objectively at your own personality. Maybe you have some of these same qualities, and you want, at some level, to get rid of them.
Or maybe you already have made changes in these areas, and it’s disturbing to you to think that you were once like that. Often, once you get clear exactly what it is that bothers you, it’s easier to let go of it.
Possibly this person actually did hurt you, perhaps intentionally. If you just can’t seem to find it in your heart to forgive them yet (#70), force yourself to sit down again and make a list of all the people you may have harmed, either accidentally or on purpose.
It’s even possible you’ve hurt this person in some way. Look at that same dark space you were coming from when those things happened and realize that, though you have moved away from that place, the person you’re dealing with may still be operating in the dark.
Perhaps what this person has to teach you is how far you’ve come, and that in order to move on you’ve got to develop some compassion, for them and for yourself. When it comes right down to it, it would appear we’re all in this together.
At some intuitive level we all know why we’re in the situations we’re in. The objective is to reach a point where we can understand what those reasons are, make whatever changes we need to make, and then move on.