The BIG breakthrough

All of us have difficult people in our lives. Some of us have them only occasionally; others have them fairly consistently. Learning to address this situation skillfully is one of the most important things we can do in life:

As human beings we have good qualities as well as bad ones. Now, anger, attachment, jealousy, hatred, are the bad side; these are the real enemy…The true troublemaker is inside.

--His Holiness the Dalai Lama

All right. It's radical. And it's sometimes hard to take on board. But it's very true. Now this part is important: Simply recognizing that the true troublemaker is inside does not automatically make the other person innocent. Everyone on the planet may well agree with us that the difficult person is objectively a monster. What we learn here, however, is that our suffering and unhappiness come from within. This realization can revolutionize our lives. Honestly.