Before I proceed to provide you a solution to this problem, we must analyze your problem first by a small fable. My apologies as the inclusion of this fable will make this very long, but it’s somehow needed. This is how the story goes.
In a jungle of modern times lives one Wolf and Hyena. The Hyena always jokes or passes sarcastic comments about Wolf and also to other animals in his friends circle. He makes fun about everything, their looks, the way they work, the way they talk, about their community and also about any achievements they made. Everyone including Wolf does know the Hyena‘s behavior, so they try to avoid or ignore him when his personal jokes started about them but do enjoy it when he do the same to any other animals. In contrast, other animals find Wolf very calm and composed in nature and very likable.
Gradually wolf started taking the things personally whenever Hyena jokes about him. On the passing of each day, he started getting irritated easily and Hyena is now started getting into his nerves. Wolf thought to ignore this problem of growing hatred against Hyena. In reality, this hatred is started destroying him internally.
He is not able to focus on anything fully; his hunting his personal life all started getting impacted because of this hatred. He was once a star hunter of that jungle now became a shadow of his own self. His failure in work started impacted his personal life where small incident caused huge fights with his wife and children. Since he kept everything to himself nobody knows what the actual problem is. He even thought of switching his friend circle to ignore him as far as he can. Since their line of work forced them to keep crossing their path so avoiding him fully was near to impossible. Soon wolf started feeling that Hyena’s joke about him are no longer joke but are personal attacks fueled from Jealousy or something else from Hyena’s side. Wolf keep assuming things about Hyena and the fire of hatred started to fuel further than to extinguish.
One fine day the king of the Jungle declared a party where every animal was invited including the Wolf and Hyena. There are amazing food, fun, and party games. One of the party games was to aim water balloon to a target, not to any animal since their party dress should not get ruined by water.
Once all the activities are over Hyena took the advantage of spare water balloons and started throwing towards other animals. He started throwing the water balloon close to the other animal but not on them so that animals have to save themselves from the water of the balloon which popped near them. Even if you get wet it will be always only your legs. Soon everyone found this game interesting and got involved in it and started throwing balloons filled with water towards each other. Wolf also started enjoying this game and since he has good reflexes got saved by most of the water balloon been thrown towards him. After a while playing this game Hyena came very close to Wolf with a water balloon and jokingly said “I will pop this balloon on your head.” Wolf thought, it’s not a joke, so to save himself he tried to move his whole body but Hyena being close enough, that movement actually caused the balloon to pop on Wolf. He got all wet and everyone started laughing on him. Hyena being finds this as his mistake ran away to another place of that huge party. This action of Hyena triggered the burst of anger in Wolf. In terms of everyone’s eyes, this is an accident and fun, but maybe not for Wolf or Hyena.
Wolf thought Hyena is trying to humiliate him in public and that hit his limit of patience to the maximum. He tried to find Hyena in the party and ran towards him and started a huge fight. Hyena also in his defense retaliated. All animals in the party got amazed by this behavior of Wolf. They thought what a spoil-sport this wolf is. They tried to stop this fight, but Wolf and Hyena got insane and want to rip each other apart. Finally, somehow all other animals are able to stop this fight and blamed everything to the Wolf and thrown him out of the party. Wolf by seeing this mean behavior of other animals can’t hold his tears and started crying.
He realized that he lost from Hyena in every aspect. Then he also thought everyone is against him and all are here to do just, personal attack on him. Now Wolf’s problem of taking the things personally started for other animals too. This behavior gradually made him the most quarrelsome animal that does the most arguments or fighting with others. Who was once liked by many became likable by none.
Here in this fable Hyena’s are the people who trigger these kind jokes or sarcastic remarks knowingly or unknowingly towards other peoples and Wolf are the peoples who do take them personally and continuously fuel the hatred inside them. None of them is fully sane or totally insane, but finally they behave it that way.
I assume if you can relate yourself somewhat to this story then you are either at stage mentioned in Paragraph 2, 3 or 7 of this fable. Each paragraph of this fable defines a stage of the hatred you are going to accumulate and the fate it’s going to receive at the end.
Stage 1 -> Paragraph 1 –> You enjoy when it happen with others but try to avoid the joke on himself.
Stage 2 – Paragraph 2 –> You started taking things personally.
Stage 3 – Paragraph 3 –> This get converted to hatred and then started impacted other aspect and relations in life. The fire keeps on igniting.
Stage 4 – Paragraph 4 –> That one fine day comes when it’s going to meet its fate.
Stage 5 – Paragraph 5 –> The moment arrived when it’s going to meet its fate. It’s the moment when the volcano of hatred inside you erupts out from you.
Stage 6 -> Paragraph 6 –> The eruption will always be in the form of negative emotions, arguments or fights. Although the chances are, peoples who witness this incident judge this incident in favor of other persons only.
Stage 7 –> Paragraph 7 –> You will start feeling the whole world conspire against you and you will go forever in loop from Stage 2 to 7 and sometimes directly to 6 or 7 by skipping some of the in between stages too. You will no longer remain same. The chances are you may give your impression to peoples around you as a confrontational person.
Before I provide you the solution and you start searching the internet about this fable, I must tell you this fable is self-written and I had closely followed this incident to unfold in front of my eyes. Where, they were two of my very closely known persons involved in this incident and just used Hyena and Wolf to symbolize them.
Mentioned below is the solution if you are facing any of the problems mentioned above.
Don’t do what you don’t like – Yes, if you don’t like someone tease you then you should not tease others too or enjoy when someone else tease others. If you like making fun of others then when someone makes fun of you takes that as a sporting spirit rather than a personal attack. Try to make fun of yourself, crack some jokes about yourself too but do not try to degrade yourself via those behaviors. This is the start point, as long as you are able to recognize the fun side of the thing which comes towards you, your mind will not recognize it as personal attack so the hatred will not grow up. Joining a laughter club will be a good idea for those who forget to laugh.
In any case, if you still not able to recognize the fun side of anything then learn to ignore. If you keep ignoring certain peoples or things then after some time they will stop coming to you. It may project you as a rude person, but it will be far better than projecting you as a quarrelsome person.
If you still can’t ignore people or things then switch company, job, home or your current location. There must be some way to avoid those peoples or incidents, try to find what works for your case. The people who try to drag you down should always be avoided.
Never allow growing the Hatred inside you – The seed of hatred once planted it will always keep growing in some form or the other. If there are cases when you don’t like something been told about you, then say it then and there itself to that person to stop. Most of the peoples do listen and try not to repeat that again. If you find the person persists even after your frequent ultimatums then the simplest way to stop the hatred inside you is to forgive and forget that person and turn his behavior into some form of love. The elaboration follows.
If you find someone is persistently irritating you and even after asking to stop had not helped then find some of the good quality of that person and try to appreciate him whenever he tries to irritate you. So he will keep spitting venom and you will keep showering love. One day he will fully stop spitting venom's toward you. This policy had given the whole country India to independence, so will work for you as individual too.
The bad part of hatred is, it keep on working even when the person is not in front of you. If you are the victim of that, then the best way to stop that is to forgive that person. You may need to imagine regularly in your mind that you forgave him for all the wrong doings he is doing or did. Gradually with a lot of practice you will able to forgive him/her to restore your inner peace. Although forgetting that person will be totally up to the individual and their techniques. Do meditation, yoga or exercise which will help you in achieving this step. This step may be necessary even when you find a way to ran away from that person as described in technique 1 above.
Go behind the scene of the actual behavior – That person may be frustrated about you or a sadist and want to frustrate you or he doesn’t know he is frustrating you and that’s his natural behavior. The behavior of a person is totally dependent on the perception you have about that person. If you like that person, then anything they do you will find is fine with you and if you hate the person, then their showcase of love may also irritate you. So find out the real culprit, is it the person or it's you? This task goes complicated when you have more than one person in the list of hatred.
Fortunately, we have a solution here. First rate the entire list of persons in terms of the hatred you have for them. Then find the reason why they behaved that way with you and why you hate them. If you are able to have some logical conclusion then use the Technique 1 and/or 2 above to stop the hatred about that person. Do this for the entire list one by one and at the end you will have the solution. You will realize even the hatred for every person is same, but the solution to handle them will be different for different persons.
In short the solution of the problem lies in resolving the step 1, 2 and 7 of the fable. All other steps are just the by-product of these steps. In my real life, I really surprised to find the calm and composed wolf to behave something like this suddenly. The hatred took the toll on him and busted as a form of anger without him know about it. So do not try to be that wolf of that story and if possible try to avoid being Hyena too.
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Originally wrote for my answer to this question How-do-I-stop-taking-things-personally on Quora. Image coursey Google.
©Tapas Majumdar, Not for reproduction without Author's permission.
