The more you interact with others, the more you will find people you don’t like. Two things might happen:
One, you would follow your default impulse, which is to mentally attack them, creating a wall between the egos — I versus you, us versus them.
Or two, you can use that encounter to deepen your spirituality, allowing people you don’t like to make you better. Here is how you do it.
Regain control of your awareness
The first step is accepting that you have limited control over their thoughts. The good news is, you do have a tremendous influence over yours. Therefore, strategically, that’s the best place to begin.
At best, obsessing about how bad others are is energetically wasteful. At worst, you risk growing cancerous negativities in your mind.
It then seeps into other aspects of your being.
You may notice the early symptom: it is when you realise you are still thinking about how annoying that person is, even hours after the interaction.
Your attention is valuable. Don’t spend it on people you don’t even like. Convert that negative psychological energy into reminders to regain control of your awareness:
- Close all external stimuli. Put your phone away. Disengaged from conversation (especially ones which you talk about other people).
- Take a long, deep breath. Close your eyes. Hold it until you experience discomfort. Exhale slowly.
- Repeat until you become aware of your mental monologue.
Once you have regained your awareness, ask three powerful questions:
1. Why am I reacting to this?
Our ego reacts strongly against what it perceives as threats. For example, when someone alters our self-description, it introduces a dissonance, making us upset.
Our self-description might be,
‘I am a smart person. Not a genius necessarily, but my intelligence is comparable to others around me’.
And then, someone discourteously points out how wrong our opinion is,
‘Really? That’s what you think? I thought everyone knows how stupid that is by now’.
That event introduces an alternative to our self-description:
‘I am not as smart as I thought. My intelligence is lower than others around me.’
When that happens, our egoic circuitry attempts to fit two contradictory information. It overheats itself. It causes pain. We might not even be conscious of it. We only experience it as sadness or anger (depending on our personality traits).
‘I don’t know why, but I find him annoying. Urgh! I hate this.’
Over time, it becomes a pattern. We may even forget the event, yet that negative pattern lingers. It activates a low-intensity pain when:
- We are around the person who hurt us, even if that person is someone we love.
Long-term relationships often fail when we are unaware that this low-intensity pain is happening. Years later, marriage dissolves, or siblings become estranged from one another, all without knowing why they end up not liking each other anymore.
- We are around people whom our mind categorise as similar to that person.
For example, if that person is our lecturer, that negative thought pattern activates when we are around other lecturers. The worst scenario is when religious people hurt us. Then the pain pattern may even activate around anything related to religion or God.
- We enter an environment that is similar to the painful event.
If it was during class presentations, we will experience the negative patterns in other public speaking events.
By questioning the way you react towards people you don’t like, you open a door to see the negative thought pattern — especially the one that imposes on you an unreasonable limit.
And once you see it, you have the opportunity to break it.
2. How can I redesign my reaction?
We break that negative thought pattern by redesigning our reaction. Ultimately, our reaction should embody love and care (raḥmah)[1].
Yes, you read that right. Your end goal is embodying love and care towards people you don’t like. That is the spiritual station for allies of God (Awliyāʾ)[2].
Understandably, most of us can’t do that in the beginning. We need time and spiritual training.
So in the beginning, embody love and care only for yourself. Forget about others. Redesign your patterns of reaction in ways that benefit your own psychological health.
For example, your reactional pattern might be,
‘People I don’t like are a source of pain. To soothe that pain, I react by endlessly talking about how vicious they are.’
Through awareness, redesign it to,
‘People I don’t like are like characters coded for my spiritual training app. I’m using them to refine my view of the world. If I’m wrong, they help me correct my worldview. If I’m right, they help me enhance my confidence. Either way, despite their intentions, they make me a superior thinker.’
3. What is the right action in this context?
There are times when the best action is to completely disconnect yourself from the people you don’t like. There are other times when the best action is to confront them directly. And of course, there are multiple options in between the two.
Choose an action that is most economical. Dealing with people you don’t like is intellectually and spiritually expensive. That is why great scholars or world-class performers ignore most negatives comments that bombard them.
And if you do need to confront people you don’t like, do it intelligently. See the whole chessboard. Unleashing harsh words might feel good in the moment, but it costs you more later.
Remember, the way others treat you already exposes who they are. So, the level of rahmah, of love and care in your response, it doesn’t indicate what they deserve; it unveils who you are.
Levels in dealing with people you don’t like
It is fascinating to learn that in Sufi tradition, there is always a higher level of approaches in dealing with people you don’t like.
For example, you should advance from tolerating the people you dislike, towards loving the goodness in people you despise.
This notion can get so esoteric that, following decades of intense spiritual practice, an ally of God (walīy) may witness goodness even in the Devil himself.
She sees the Devil’s disobedience against God’s command to bow to Adam as arisen out of love. The Devil loves God so much that he never wants to bow to anyone else, even if his misguided love destines him to the Fire.
Of course, in our daily lives, we don’t have to be at that level. But be open to the idea that there is always a better way to deal with people you don’t like.
The next time you encounter people you don’t like, get excited. They are about to make you a better person.
Notes:
[1] Scholars often render raḥmah as ‘mercy’. Even if you are a non-Muslim, you may have heard Al-Raḥmān. It is one of the Names of God. Muslims view God as an extremely Compassionate and Merciful.
Both raḥmah and Al-Raḥmān come from the same triliteral root, R-H-M. It means that, linguistically, their meanings are deeply related.
I attended a talk by Nouman Ali Khan where he introduced the meaning as ‘love and care’. I studied and have preferred that meaning ever since. See Lessons from Surah Ar Rahman.
[2] Awliyāʾ is the plural of walīy. The closest word in English that I know of is ‘saints’. These individuals dedicate their lives to spiritual excellence.
In our materialistic world, it is easier to understand people with legendary physical excellence, like world-class footballers.
So think of saints as people with equivalently legendary spiritual excellence. Common examples are Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (d. 801) and Murābiṭ al-Ḥajj (d. 2018).