Managing Your Mind around Annoying People

Lisa Hoelzer
9 min readMar 6, 2024
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

A friend of mine was complaining to her mom about some frustrating coworkers. In response, her mom said, “Life would be so great if it wasn’t for the humans!” This joking answer reminds us that there really isn’t life without humans. And, for the most part, we wouldn’t want there to be. Many people in our lives bring us a lot of joy and happiness, but then there are some who provoke us.

We all have struggles with other people: they say rude things; they don’t like us or they leave us out, they don’t agree with us, they don’t do what we want them to, they brag about themselves — there are so many ways for people to be annoying!

As I learned about life coaching and mind management principles and tried to apply them, sometimes I would have arguments with my coach in my mind when I was irritated about a particular situation. My side would sound like this: “You have to admit that this certain thing is annoying. It’s simply a fact and anyone would agree.” After my rant, I would allow her to reply. I’d imagine what she would say based on the various concepts she had taught me.

One of those mental conversations was about my daughter’s roommates in college. They didn’t keep the apartment clean and left wet towels in the corners of the bathroom to molder. Their dirty dishes sat in the sink with food clinging to the sides, and their belongings could be found lying around the apartment. Because of the uncleanliness, the apartment literally started to smell.

When my daughter would tell me about them, I would jump in the ditch with her. I supposed she was justified in being annoyed and that the roommates were being unreasonably irresponsible.

When I imagined how my coach would respond, I came up with five applicable principles.

1. The goal is not to get rid of negative emotion.

2. Don’t give away your power by believing something or someone else is creating your experience.

3. Is this feeling serving you? (In other words, is it clean pain or dirty pain?)

4. Remind your brain, “You don’t need to notice that.”

5. Have love for everyone in the story.

First of all, after I explained my (or my daughter’s) sob story to her, my coach would remind me that the goal of mind management is not to get rid of all negative emotion. She would say, “You can feel and think whatever you want, and no one is trying to take that away from you. If you want to feel annoyed, go right ahead.”

It’s true that in life coaching we learn to ask ourselves if our thoughts and feelings are serving us, and if they aren’t, realize that we can change them. But it’s also okay to experience negative emotion. Trying to be constantly happy is exhausting, and it isn’t how we as humans are wired. Remember the 50/50 rule: 50% of our life is supposed to be uncomfortable. Our emotions will always be half negative and half positive, and that’s okay.

This is a human life; nothing has gone wrong. There’s no off-ramp from the human experience. We can’t have constant positive emotions. When we have difficult feelings and then think we’re wrong for having them, we layer on more unpleasantness (this is called a Model on a Model). So no, life coaching is not about being happy about everything and walking around on rainbows all day.

Second, my coach would prompt me to identify who or what is creating the annoyed feeling. My default brain is telling me that the roommates are causing the annoyance (or maybe the dishes themselves?). If this is true, then I have lost my power over the experience. I have to feel irritated about it.

Of course, the frustration is not coming from the roommates or the unclean apartment. It is generated by thoughts. We do not feel anything about a circumstance until we think something about it. Acknowledging that we are responsible for our own feelings (that they come from our thoughts) and that only we can change them is emotional maturity.

We do not feel anything about a circumstance until we think something about it.

We don’t have to change them if we don’t want to (remember, it’s okay to feel negative emotion), and we’re not going to be able to be emotionally mature all the time. But we’re trying to increase our awareness of our own power by focusing on what we can work with and not what is outside of our control.

The third thing my coach would bring up is a question. She would ask, “Is this feeling serving you?” Sometimes our negative emotion can be helpful. In this roommate dishes situation, if being annoyed motivates us to clean up the apartment and then we let go of the annoyance, it was serving us. If being irritated motivates us to talk to our roommates and figure out a solution, then it was serving us. Using the Model can help us see what results come from our emotions.

But, if the feeling of annoyance lingers and bothers us and produces more negative feelings toward the roommates and a feeling of overwhelm and powerlessness, then it is not serving us. In this case, we might benefit from some mind management. We would be wise to focus our brain away from changing others and toward an awareness of ourselves (the fourth and fifth concept below will help).

Another way of evaluating if the emotion is serving us is by determining whether it is clean pain or dirty pain. Clean pain means acknowledging the disappointment in the event and also recognizing its source. Clean pain includes allowing the feeling and realizing that this is what it’s like to be human. The emotion moves through you. You don’t make it mean anything, and you take responsibility for it (know that it’s caused by your thoughts). It’s not necessarily a pleasant sensation, but clean pain feels cathartic and real.

Dirty pain, on the other hand, stays longer. It happens when you layer on added frustration (for example, irritated at the situation and also mad at yourself for being irritated). Dirty pain causes problems and makes you act irrationally. It prompts you to go to the past and dredge up old hurts or be in the future thinking everything will always be horrible.

Simple annoyance with the messy dishes could be clean pain. You allow yourself to feel the feeling. You have the sense of, “That’s lousy, but this is just how life is.” You move on without being too bothered.

When you move into dirty pain in this circumstance, your thoughts are more like, “This is terrible; my life is so unfair; this always happens to me!” You feel like your roommates are out to get you and that you can’t stand the experience. In this scenario, you presume that you have no power or control over your life.

When you know this clean pain/dirty pain concept, you can assess the incident along these lines. Consciously nudge yourself away from dirty pain and allow yourself to feel the clean pain. Then you are not using up emotional energy going down the rabbit hole of frustration. You’ll have more capacity to find a better solution.

As humans we naturally look around and find things we don’t like. As we try to achieve goals, feel better, and minimize troubles, we believe that manipulating external things is an effective route. But mind management show us that considering our role in the event is a quicker, more effective way to get what we want. Let’s turn our attention to things inside of us instead of outside.

The fourth thing my coach would teach is how to consciously train your mind to do this. Here’s one strategy. When faced with a frustrating situation, particularly what you might deem someone else’s “bad” behavior, assume the offending behavior will continue, and ask yourself, “Now what?”

They are going to continue to do that, and who am I going to be? Isn’t that refreshing? You don’t have to go over and over their behavior and how they should be different. You stop pushing away reality or resisting it. You will find more serenity when you say yes to it. Lower your defenses. People can and will do whatever they want. When you allow your brain to accept this fact, you’ll be on your way to peace.

Stop pushing away reality or resisting it. You will find more serenity when you say yes to it.

This is a powerful concept. Most of us want to concentrate on how the other person is doing it wrong. We want to convince anyone listening that the offending person should change. This may or may not be true, but we don’t control the other person. The best thing we can do is drop that story, let go of the drama, and accept that they will continue to act that way. Once we’ve released them to act how they are, we can get to work finding ways to make our life better.

One sentence that helps direct your mind away from the difficult person is “You don’t need to notice that.” Assume that the roommates are going to continue to leave dishes out and keep the apartment untidy, and tell yourself you don’t even need to notice it. Your mind wants to focus on the dirty dishes and the roommates’ lack of cleaning more than on your own ideas about the dirty dishes. Remind your brain that it’s not important to notice them. Doing something about the occurrence does not require being upset or angry about it.

You have the option to think, “Oh yeah, that’s how they are and that’s fine. My brain presumes it’s important to pay attention to those things, but I know now that it isn’t. I don’t need to notice that.” Noticing what you dislike about things, especially things out of your control, is not a good use of your mind energy. Free up that energy to look for effective solutions.

The last piece of advice I can imagine my coach giving is to have love for everyone in the story. The role of a coach isn’t to “side” with you or agree that someone or something in your life is wrong. A coach holds space for your narrative and at the same time has love for everyone else in the story. She has concern for each person and understands that everyone is trying their best. And she will help you see that too.

This is another approach to saving your emotional energy: find a way to be compassionate toward those you’re upset with. It’s probably hard being them. Being a human is challenging and everyone is doing the best they can. Be interested in and curious about their way of doing things. Ask, “I wonder what is going on for them?”

It can take effort at first to redirect your mind to these notions. It’s like when you move, and your default brain takes you back to your old house when you’re driving home from the store. You have to be conscious about it for the first little while, then you get in the habit of giving others the benefit of the doubt.

You will find great relief by believing there is no person wronged and person who did wrong. Everyone has reasons for how they are acting. We are all simply humans living our lives, doing what humans do. This doesn’t mean you have to continue to be mistreated or stay in a situation you don’t want to. You can have mental peace about a circumstance and still change it. You will make better decisions if you clean up the drama about the other person, have compassion for her, and also make choices that are best for you.

Another way of phrasing this is “I love her, and I love me.” I love her and I understand that she is doing her best. I don’t hold any grudge or frustration for her because that only punishes me. I love me, which means I make decisions that are best for me, keeping myself out of danger and optimizing my life.

I don’t hold any grudge or frustration for her because that only punishes me.

There are some incidents that feel so frustrating, our mind tells us we have to be upset by them. But this simply isn’t true. We can be if we want to, because negative emotion is not a problem to be solved, but we can also use mind management techniques to minimize our disturbance and find contentment. The five life coach skills elaborated in this article can help with almost any annoying person or unpleasant circumstance.

1. Accept and allow negative emotion.

2. Remember that you create your emotion with your thoughts.

3. Consider whether the feeling is serving you or not.

4. Remind your brain, “You don’t need to notice that.”

5. Have love for everyone in the story.

Try this on: “I wonder what is going on for them?”

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“Disappointment comes in the gap between expectation and reality.”

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Lisa Hoelzer

Lisa Hoelzer has a masters in social work and is a lifelong student of the human psyche, including motivations, biases, mind management, and mental health.