why you shouldn’t get upset about people’s reactions to you

Published on March 10, 2008 in anything. 323 Comments Tags: .

Many times when we get upset it’s because of other people’s reac­tions. Some­times it’s because some­one is just an ass­hole. Some­times it’s because a friend gives some unex­pected behav­iors and it throws you off.

The prior case is pretty common and noth­ing to become too upset about. There are ass­holes in the world and it isn’t worth too much feel­ing bad for them.

The later case, how­ever, is often what hurts most and lasts for quite some time until we can sort of forget about it. We expect our friends to be nice to us, even though the friend may not be a really close friend after all.

Nev­er­the­less, if you really come to think of it, it doesn’t make too much sense to be upset. When a friend is mean to you, there are two pos­si­ble reasons

  1. In fact he doesn’t really like you and he sort of acci­den­tally leaked out.
  2. He is in a bad mood.

If it is case #1, and it is prob­a­bly that he is in fact an ass­hole. This is maybe one gen­uine case where get­ting upset is rea­son­able, but not for the friend’s reac­tion, but real­iz­ing that you’ll have to lose a friend.

In case #2, his mood is bad prob­a­bly due to some bad short term expe­ri­ences. Maybe he got cheated some money; maybe his girl­friend just wouldn’t be rea­son­able; maybe he stepped on cat poops in the morn­ing. All of these things you will never be able to know, let alone have con­trol over them.

In the end, maybe we are all too ego­cen­tric. The friend is prob­a­bly feel­ing him­self spe­cial and want to be under­stood about his mis­for­tunes, mag­i­cally On the other hand, we are some­times too igno­rant to notice what’s really going on and blame the friend for being rude, with­out trying to under­stand him.

The next time some­one treats you badly, think again: is he doing this because he just had a bad day? That may be the trick to avoid a sour rela­tion­ship and to turn it into a newer level.

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