When it comes to relationships, we should think of many ways to deal with selfish or difficult people. All of these ways are through love. 

Try to understand why they’re selfish. They haven’t experienced love in their life so they become selfish. They don’t trust others so they become selfish. Give them more love. Create a sense of belongingness with them. 

How to deal with a selfish person

Even a gorilla has a family! Though someone may be violent to everybody else, they have someone very close to them. At least they have human values with the ones who are close to them. I don’t see a single human being who is totally, 100% bad. They have that 1 or 2 percent of goodness in them. 

The formula to save your mind

The propounder of yoga, Sage Patanjali, has given a formula with 4 sutras (4 methods or techniques) to save your own mind. Save your mind by having the following 4 attitudes towards 4 different types of people on the planet.

• Friendliness: With people who are happy you need to be friendly. If you’re not, you’ll give rise to jealousy within yourself. You’ll become hateful and try to find fault in them. These imperfections in the mind will start coming up. So what should you do when you find someone who is happy? Shake hands and know that they’re your friend. When your friends are happy, will you be upset? No! You’ll say, “My friend is happy. I’m so happy because he is.” If your friend is unhappy, you become unhappy. So you need friendliness with those who are happy.

• Compassion: What about those who are miserable? Friendliness is not the solution in this situation. Ninety percent of the time a person becomes miserable due to his own mind. It’s his own doing most of the time. So, what should you do? Be compassionate. There’s a difference between friendliness and compassion. If you’re friendly with this type of person your vision will also get blurred. You’ll also go in the same direction as them. If a friend is miserable, angry, and sad, and you shake hands with him, then what? You’ll also become angry and miserable. Instead, have compassion for those who are miserable. Circumstances have made them miserable. Help them out. Develop this quality of compassion within you when you look at miserable people. 

• Happiness: When someone is doing good work, be happy for them. 

• Indifference: When someone is doing horrible work, be indifferent towards them. Don’t hate them. If that man hates something and you hate back, then you’re no better than he is. So save your mind from hatred with an attitude of indifference towards people doing wrong things. Although you have to act to correct them on the outside, inside have an indifferent attitude. Only when you feel indifferent will you be able to teach somebody. See, suppose what some person is doing is harmful. And you tell them, “What you’re doing is harmful to me. Don’t do it,” they won’t stop. But if you tell them, “What you’re doing is going to cause harm to you. Don’t do it,” then you’re educating them. Saying, “Your behavior is not good for you,” is a way to make someone aware of their mistake.

Simply cultivate them from within you. They’ll automatically and spontaneously happen in your life. What is the result of doing this? Your mind will be in a pleasant state of peace. Grace will flow. When it flows through your mind, it will flow through you to everybody. 

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Editor’s note:

To learn more about relating to different types of people, check out our free breath and meditation online session with a live instructor. You will learn about SKY Breath Meditation, which has helped millions of people around the world improve all aspects of their lives.

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