If someone has a problem with you, whose problem is it?

If someone sees you as their problem, it is, seriously, their problem – not yours!

A friend called me to share how his brother has been making Life miserable for him in their family business. Although a formal separation has been gone through between them, my friend’s brother is insinuating and charging his sibling with transgressions and non-compliance. “I have no problem with him. And I have no problem with the share of the business that I have been left with to manage. I feel very disturbed that my brother has a problem with me,” lamented my friend.

Now, this could be anybody’s story. People often have problems with other people. And if you happen to be, like my friend, with whom someone has a problem, you too may want to learn to simply ignore it. What can you do if someone has a problem with you? At best you can hear their point of view and if there’s something to learn, something to unlearn and something to change in you, you can go to work on it. But what if someone continues to have a problem with you despite your best efforts and intentions to appease them? More important, what if you are someone’s problem – not what you do or what you don’t do? Well, the most sensible response must be to shrug off that viewpoint saying ‘too bad’ and move on. It is when you lack that discerning ability, and instead grieve over why you are being perceived wrongly, that you suffer.

When you grieve and suffer over such inconsequential opinions, you sometimes end up becoming a problem for yourself. And that’s such a sad thing to happen. So, develop a more evolved and mature view of Life. You can only control what you think and do. You cannot control what others think and do. So, if someone’s insists on having a problem with you, let them have the pleasure of keeping it that way! Why work overtime to displease or dissatisfy them?