A friend recounted a story of a relative who was very hard to live with. She had a really bad attitude and was always picking on people’s mistakes. This didn’t go down well with the others of course and someone pointed out this out to her. In a fit of frustration, she said “You think it’s hard to live with me? It’s much harder to be me.”
We’ve all experienced bad attitude. I’m sure we all have tales of that service provider who had a disgusting attitude or that teammate who was just so hard to work with. Hopefully we’ve doled out less of this behaviour but hey, we all get carried away by illusions of our own genius at times.
Of late, every time I find myself struggling to keep my temper in check because of bad attitude from somebody who does it often, the story of my friend’s relative comes to mind. As hard as it is to receive bad attitude, it must be much harder to be the person constantly doling it out. If you are close enough to the person, perhaps you can even replace irritation with a willingness to help as there’s clearly a deeper problem.
That never occurred to me until I heard this story. Walking a mile in the other person’s shoes is easier said than done.
A Learning a Day 