How do you deal with someone who doesn't like you?

We often wonder what is the best way to deal with people when they don't like us. Its a normal phenomenon, be it a professional or a personal relationship. We all come across some people who don't like us and most likely those are the same people you aren't comfortable with. It's a normal phenomenon. However, we have to deal with them, we have to get along, for whatever personal or professional reason looking at a bigger picture. It would have been always better to keep them out of your life, if possible.

Often we focus on those people who actually expresses by their actions that they don't like us, however, there are always those bunch, who basically are jealous, insecure of themselves, they dislike us, however wear a mask to pretend that they like us. Those are the tough lot and they are the challenge we have to be more worried about. We always have our guards on when we know the person doesn't like us, but we often keep the door open to those masked ones.

I remember an internet forward, where the moral said...
"Not everyone who dumps shit on you is your enemy and not everyone who digs you out of it is your friend".

It's definitely true. So how to deal with it. One way is to address the problem. First of all we need to put ourself to task and review if it was us or our behavior that ticked them off in the first place. Is there something we can do to change it? Are we the only one having problem with the person? Can it be changed if we alter ourself without doing something that hurts our world? If even after this self-retrospection we can't find a solution, we have to figure out a way to deal with the person, regardless of his dislike.

It's often a good advise to define your relationships. There are various levels like strangers, acquaintances, colleagues, friends, loved ones, family and so on. We often behave differently to all these different relationships, but then handful of people often move up from being a stranger even up to the family, but most of them lie between being acquaintance and friends. It would be wise if we classify our relationships, it makes a huge impact on how you visualize it, how you behave and how you expect to be behaved with.

Setting the right expectation in a relationship helps the relationship to grow. It's not like setting rules, but drawing the line, choosing your guard and being aware of the depth/level is the best way to deal with people. Once we achieve that, we can easily handle people regardless of the fact that they like us or not.

Do we wish to paint the world in our own colors?

Reading an editorial in a newspaper raised this question in my mind. Thinking a bit more made me realize that it was pretty much true. We love to paint our own world. It's nothing new, it's a common phenomenon of not only human beings, but if we observe closely, all living beings. Like birds, they all have nests, but they have varied style. Their nest is their world, so they structure it like that.

Decided to talk this over with some people on a generic level and I found that it's very common in people, but what I also observed is that people not only like to paint the world around them, they love to see people around them in a manner they like. However, there lies the subtle difference, they will only like to see those people whom they love or care for, it isn't universal. It can be a family member, close friends, your teacher, your idol, your favorite sportsman or movie star. It basically anyone whom you care for.

So does this mean if someone expects you to change, the person cares about you. Yes, absolutely unless it serves some other purpose. Sometimes we don't see a few aspects of life and if a loved one shows us the same, its how they compliment us, its how they complete our world. Some people might not be sport enough to take suggestions, it's not because of anything else but their inner demons. One must be sport enough, to be open to suggestions, feedback and then they always get to decide what they want to do with it. If the colors (read suggestion) are good, then isn't it wise to get painted in it. After all that makes your world beautiful. Said that, one must get painted, and loose their originality and their own self as every individual is born with some unique traits.

On the lighter side, have you played paint ball? That's another way to get yourself colored... :)

Why trust plays a vital role in making or breaking a relationship...

First topic of the season, and what a difficult one to write on, but I have been thinking about it, based on certain events that took place. Not that it affects me a lot but can't help it ignoring it either, so it spite of being such a debatable topic, decided to write on it.

Often we ask a question to ourself? Do we trust someone? Often the answer lies within ourselves. Do we trust ourself before we actually trust someone else. The beautiful part of trust is that sometimes it takes ages and still you can't trust someone you know, sometime a few moments is good enough. So why is this stark difference, why does it vary so much, why isn't it uniform. How does trust changes everything. If you trust someone, believe in someone, things are so different and when you loose trust one someone, the world changes completely.

Most of us have experienced this breaking and building of trust & also faced the consequences. So this makes me wonder how strange life is and how a relationship is a strong or weak one based on the trust worthiness of the those involved in it. Some people say that trust is like a thin line, very tensile but at the same time very tender. So it can withheld immense amount of pressure but if broken, it is absolutely brittle. It's like glass, it's beautiful till it's fine, you see the truth in it. Once broken, it can never be put back to it's original state and you get to see yourself in the broken pieces, the truth is broken. The more you try to clean it up, the more it hurts your fingers, bleeds your fingers. That's the hard reality of life.

Trust makes us believe in the person, more than we do on ourself and when it breaks, it breaks the image, it breaks the castle and with it a flood it drives away all that we ever built. That's when we break, so does the relationship. The other aspect is, how much we trust ourself, if we do, we find it easy to trust others and if we don't, we find it hard to trust others. So the best is to make yourself trustworthy and be optimistic about the trustworthiness of the person you are in relationship with.

So build up the trust, that's the way to live !