7. Own Your Self Worth. You are equipped with everything you need to succeed, even if you haven’t been specifically trained for your job. When you feel attacked, check yourself for a response before a reaction.

8. Anger Means Danger. Emotions are contagious, like the flu. Encounters with anger (and that includes all its shades: irritation, frustration, annoyance, and the like) rarely end well for anyone involved. If someone is voicing their feelings, they are often looking for a place to park them. It’s ok to pause the conversation and come back to it later.

9. Go Beyond Worry. You have worries. You also have solutions. Your challenge is to trust that you can solve a problem with creativity and considered response instead of reactivity.

10. Find Patience. We know the right path is to practice patience, especially when it’s hard. Patience is a quality of emotional equilibrium and neutrality. Neutrality is where you enjoy the highest creativity, where you see to most alternatives to reactivity.

11. Maintain Inner Peace. Inner peace is a resource that is always available to us, even under the most intense life pressures. It starts with the breath.

12. Cultivate Perspective. The hurt feelings that come from remembering how we were slighted can run deep. When we feel intensity, it’s important to cultivate perspective.

13. Don’t compromise…yourself. There are times when you feel tremendous forces moving you in a particular direction, and you feel like giving in. Here, it’s time to understand which people need to be pleased and why—because it’s not going to be everyone.

14. Be your own guide. When you commit to a practice, you are developing muscle memory for a certain way of thinking. When challenged, your thinking will have had enough practice to help you perform better. Your practice could be faith, writing, journaling, meditation, yoga, exercise—anything with a deep focus. Practice helps you process much of the “static of life” and enables you to do amazing things. Make your practice, whatever it is, a primary focus of your day.

Why let someone else’s bad attitude ruin your day? The Little Book Of Dealing With Challenging People enables you with all the tools and tactics you need to handle all kinds of people—to make your life less stressful and a great deal easier.