Our own spiritual work will not heal our coworkers, but it will over time heal the trauma that they have caused in us. The goal is not to manifest better behavior out of our coworkers. The goal is to reach a place where we can find peace in toxic places.
Shockingly, this inner work does actually lead to coworkers treating us better because we have risen above all conflict. People who feed on conflict give up when their efforts are wasted. The more we rise above it, the less dirty we get by mud slingers who are down in the muck.
The bigger the ego we have, the bigger the target we are to toxic people. When we give up the ego, we become immune from the slings and arrows of others. Their arrows flow right through us with nothing to stick to.
When we expand our consciousness, toxic people become small and insignificant to us. They sense their own insignificance and often quit their childish behavior.
The key is to stay present and relaxed. Even if someone is rude, it won’t bother us if we are confident and joyful. So we must develop that inner peace and freedom. We must nurture that true and lasting happiness from within.
There are two types of pleasure. One comes from achieving, acquiring, conquering and receiving. This type is short lived, stressful, and requires constant praise and success.
The second type comes from within. It is the feeling of gratitude simply for being alive. It is the love for this miraculous universe. And it is the peace that comes from inner stillness.
The second kind of happiness grows and grows the more we practice it. It is unshakable and unwavering. It is steady and constant. When we know the second kind of happiness, people who are toxic become our teachers. We embrace their lessons of patience and compassion.
Here is how to develop permanent peace, rise above toxic coworkers, and love life again in all its richness and diversity of experiences.
How to Protect/Distance Yourself from a Toxic Colleague
Sometimes, we can’t get away from people we are forced to work closely with. But what I have found works the best is to lovingly set boundaries about how others can treat you.
When we angrily tell others how we will allow them to treat us, the other people will get defensive, put up their own walls that prevent them from listening, and get angry in return.
But everything we need to say can be done with love, even reprimanding someone. The only way to do this is to truly be calm and compassionate. If we try to fake it, our angry energy will still come through.
Human beings, when unconscious of our behavior, will magnify whatever energy is being directed towards us. If we are being yelled at, we are likely to yell back. If we are being smiled at, we tend to smile back.
So before getting mad at someone, notice your anger. Remember that people are just people. They are not angels. They do not mean to cause harm or be unmindful, it’s just all they know.
So take a deep breath, let go of your desire and expectation for them to be any different than they are. Remember that they have been brought up their whole life to be the way they are now. Then, try to teach and educate them with the kind of compassion that would make even the most fragile ego listen.
How to Keep Your Cool While Dealing with Toxic Colleagues
We all know the basics: take 10 deep breaths, remove yourself until you can cool down, etc… But even if we do those things, we still got upset, our stress levels spiked, and now we need to spend some time recovering.
To be really effective at staying calm, we need to do two things even before an encounter with a toxic coworker.
1. Practice, practice, practice.
The way we practice dealing with toxic people is not by increasing our time with toxic people. It is through the power of visualization.
Science has shown that visualizing something creates the same brain activity as if the thing was actually happening. This means that we can create new habits simply by repeatedly visualizing a behavior or activity.
So in the middle of your daily meditation or just at random times throughout the day, visualize the toxic person or people you have to deal with. In your mind, see them engaging in toxic behavior toward you. Imagine them really treating you bad and doing the things that really set you off.
Then, visualize yourself responding precisely as your highest wisdom would wish to respond. Your higher self would probably recognize that getting upset over the words of an unkind person would be insane. See yourself staying calm and peaceful. Hear your thoughts of pity and sympathy for such a toxic person. Feel the calmness of your breath and heart rate.
The more you do this, the faster those positive reactions become second nature. When visualizing, the more details you can see and feel, the better. If you have a hard time visualizing (as I do), you can think more conceptually about the situation. It works just as well to think about this in whichever way your brain tends to think about experiences. For some people it’s visual, for others it may be more verbal.
2. Stay Present
99% of the time, losing our temper, getting upset, and acting out of anger only happens when we have lost ourselves (I say 99% because 1% of the time we may consciously choose to express anger in order to make a strong point, such as conveying to a child that they have done something dangerous, such as running into the street without looking).
Anger can only happen when we get caught up in a mental story. These mental stories often are formed in the past and get triggered when someone touches on them. Such as, if we believe people should always treat us with kindness and respect (not inherently an unreasonable expectation), we will get angry and triggered when someone disrespects us.
But, if we stay present, we’ll know that nothing is worth disturbing our inner peace. We’ll know that people can do whatever they want; that’s their business. Our response is our business. If we get triggered and lose ourselves, we lose the ability to respond wisely.
All anger is a response to something that happened in the past. If we stay present, we’ll realize there is nothing worth getting upset about because the bad thing is already over. We can all learn to move on from insult instantaneously.
To learn to stay present, we must make it our first and foremost goal in life. Truly, there is nothing more important. We don’t have to live our lives differently. We only have to make each moment conscious.
With stable awareness of our breath and our surroundings, everything in life becomes enjoyable. Even toxic people.
The past cannot hurt us. The future does not exist. This is the moment that matters. Whether we live our whole lives in screens or in our head (or both), we are not really living life.
Life is meant to be lived. To live it, we must show up for it. So every moment of the day that you can remember, be present for it. Take a few conscious breaths and look around with curiosity and intensity. Hear the subtle sounds around you. And make sure your breathing is calm, deep and slow.
Do this especially with pleasurable experiences and with difficult ones, as these are the moments most likely to cause us to forget ourselves.
At first you may only remember to do it once or twice a day. But over time, those moments will become more frequent and last longer. When it becomes your natural state of being, life will be so peaceful that no person will be able to bring you down.
This doesn’t mean you will never think again. It simply means that your thinking will be intentional, positive, useful and wise.
Weekly Writings from the Desk of Todd Perelmuter
Question Answered in This Blog:
Dear Todd, tomorrow I will have to go to work at a toxic place surrounded by toxic people to be able to pay for being alive. That’s why I don’t read spiritual stuff, because it makes me dream that maybe this misery will end and I develop hopes for it, but in reality it will not end, the misery will continue. Any thoughts?
