How to Deal With Difficult People

6 min readMar 19, 2023

3 Stoic Steps — inspired by Marcus Aurelius

Last May I wrote an article exploring different rules of thumb that people use to regulate their interactions with others (see here). In summary, you’ve got:

The Iron Rule: Might Makes Right — terrible advice.
The Golden Rule: Treat Others How You Want To Be Treated — much better, but has its flaws.
The Silver Rule: Do NOT Treat Others How You Do Not Want To Be Treated — in my opinion (and not just mine) is more robust than the Golden Rule.
The Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would want to be done to them — a modern attempt to improve on the Golden Rule, but has serious flaws.
Finally, The Papirus Rule (that’s what I’m calling it): Treat people as they treat other people — unusual advice from Ancient Egyptians, brings up interesting issues.

We all typically use a combination of such rules and perhaps others, though the Silver Rule is, in my opinion, the absolute best (Nassim Nicholas Taleb agrees) and should be the basis for your actions. The Papirus Rule helps when things are suspiciously good or bad in relationships. The Golden and Platinum rules guide positive action.

But sometimes all this comes short.

Enter difficult people. We all have them in our lives. In our families, at our workplaces, anywhere. People we have trouble connecting and communicating with. As tensions rise, or sometimes cold war is the chosen approach, the distance between us grows and we are unable to deal with them. Some then choose to fight, while others prefer flight. No matter how you handle them, often these interactions, the words and the actions of such people occupy our thoughts, creating anger and frustration, and distracting us from what we ought to focus on in our lives.

I just read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (see my takeaways here) and the author, who was simultaneously a Roman Emperor and a stoic philosopher, gives a useful perspective on the issue that I would like to reflect on in this article and distill it into a simple three-step process. Simple, but not easy.

Very early in the book, Marcus Aurelius writes: “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and unfriendly.” Yes, human nature and behavior did not change much in the last two thousand years. Despite being in the ultimate position of power, the emperor reminds himself that difficult people are simply a part of life and he has to deal with them.

Here is another passage: When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.

This acknowledgment offers a clue to the first step — recognizing that difficult people are there and you cannot just wish them away.

Step 1 — Understand and accept that we do not control other people.

As Marcus Aurelius puts it: “Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them… Not spitefully… but in an honest way”. One of the basic tenets of stoicism — accepting what you cannot control is a strangely liberating thought. Stop trying, desperately and pointlessly, to change the behavior of other people. True change will only happen if they choose to make a change. It is not your responsibility. It is a paradox of sorts, but it is only once you recognize how much you do not control in your life that you start feeling in control because you gain clarity on what is worth focusing on, where you can make an impact, and therefore what you need to focus on.

Step 2 —Change your perspective.

Here, there are two elements. Firstly, learn, train, and practice to see things as they are, without panic and exaggeration. Let’s go back to the wise words of Marcus Aurelius: “Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” Maintain composure. Don’t catastrophize (a concept I discovered recently, and covered in my related article here). As Lincoln said: “This too shall pass”.

Secondly, and crucially, remind yourself that every difficult person in front of you is an integral part of this world. Your world. Your life. Embrace the stoic concept of sympatheia — that everything is mutually interdependent.

As Marcus Aurelius puts it: “Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. For in a sense, all things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other — for one thing follows after another according to their tension of movement, their sympathetic stirrings, and the unity of all substance.”

Marcus Aurelius revisits this concept over and over in Meditations: “Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected. They are composed harmoniously, and together they compose the world.”

Here is the passage that got me thinking: “All of us are working on the same project. Some consciously, with understanding: some without knowing it. (I think this is what Heraclitus meant when he said that “those who sleep are also hard at work” — that they too collaborate in what happens.) Some of us work in one way and some in others. And those who complain and try to obstruct and thwart things — they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well.”

Think about it. Every difficult person — has to exist. When you take this perspective, everything seems different.

Try it. Next time you come across a difficult person and before your instincts kick in and you want to charge in, pause. Don’t waste time wishing that this person was not like that. Don’t wish they did not exist. Don’t be surprised. Accept that this person too is a necessary element of the universe. That there could be a purpose in your facing this particular challenge.

To clarify, this is not about fate or destiny. This is about acceptance. About consciously working to identify the functional purpose behind every difficult encounter — what you learn, what you find out, and what you can do better in the future. So this is not — everything happens for a reason. This is about constructing a reason out of an experience and then putting it to your service.

Step 3, an ever-present element in any stoic framework — Take Action.

Stoics would not be stoics without emphasis on action. As they say, at some point we need to “put our books aside and take action”, or As Seneca says, “the words must become works”.

During interaction with difficult people, show kindness. Argue if you must. Try to convince. If you cannot correct the opinions or the actions of others, you need to accept that. Even leave them be. In any case, the key is — what is your specific takeaway from the experience of dealing with this particular difficult person? Do you need to improve your pitch? Your negotiation skills? Your writing? Identify what it is that the encounter has taught you, and take action to address that.

Do not waste time in judgment and anger. All it brings is distress, frustration, and wasted time. We all have enough on our plates. Instead, focus on becoming better. As Marcus Aurelius put it, “Waste no time arguing what a good man should be. Be one”. Remember the Two Rules.

If you want to read more about Marcus Aurelius I recommend this page of the Daily Stoic website by Ryan Holiday. You can also check out Ryan Holiday’s book Lives of the Stoics.

If you are interested in the philosophy of Stoicism, I recommend the books by Ryan Holiday and Massimo Pigliucci. I recently got my hands on The Practicing by Ward Farnsworth and The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot, but have not yet read them. Ryan Holiday’s website The Daily Stoic is an excellent resource on Stoicism.

Check out my other articles:

How to Deal With Difficult People

Written by Rational Badger