How to deal with difficult people

Andrew Sweeny
Jul 29, 2017 · 1 min read

Step 1: Visualise all the terrible things you want to do to your adversary in graphic detail — allow for creative excess. (which is what one does naturally anyway). Dramatically enact doing those things with an inanimate object — a pillow, a dead tree, whatever — in some isolated place far from people. Do this in an exaggerated, dramatic, physical, extreme manner — without subtly or nuance.

Important: Do not in any circumstances direct this energy towards an actual person.

Step 2: Enact this until completely exhausted, and then make solemn promise never to do that under any circumstances for real — to take the higher ground. This will train one not react to provocation or bullying — but to remain a rock. By remembering what what one is capable of, by knowing in ones bones that one actually has teeth, we gain invaluable protection against ‘demonic spirits’ or bad people, or being a vulnerable victim.

Step 3: Realise the humour of the drama and caricature that one has created, and if possible, laugh long and hard from the belly.

This can be done also entirely in the imagination, virtually, but only if it is deeply felt.

— ©The Unemployed Samurai’s guidebook for meaningful living

Compressed scraps of angel melody, stories, essays, rants against reductionism, commands from the deep.

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