Stop Taking People's Bullshit Seriously

Or, how to be happy-go-lucky

Me, right now, until tomorrow

Everyone has their bullshit.

Things that they do that are unnerving, consistent over time, annoying, mean, petty, or distasteful.

Their unenlightened character traits or behaviours.

Your parents have their bullshit. Your partner has their bullshit. Your kids, your sister, your brother, your friends, your cat and your dog have their bullshit.

And YOU have your bullshit.

When bullshit collides, is where life gets ugly. You can go through days, weeks, months or years of bullshit interactions because you take the bullshit personally, and then collude with your own bullshit.

What happens in this collusion?

You become MISERABLE.

You become a victim, a martyr, a saint, a monk, whatever you tell yourself. You become superior to other people’s bullshit in your mind, and wonder how they can get away with behaving in such a ghastly manner towards you, the enlightened one.

There must be something wrong with them.

And so, you respond with your own bullshit. You assassinate their character, in your head and sometimes out loud. You figure nothing will change, you will always be on the receiving end of this bullshit and so you may as well defend yourself, either by arguing or by disengaging.

You desperately need to prove to them that you are worthy of being treated with respect. Their bullshit is intolerable. They must understand.

But don’t fool yourself. You’re not proving anything, nor disengaging. You can’t disengage. You’re more hooked than ever. Their bullshit is a drug.

You try to whiff it out, always on guard for the scent. They can be acting like saints, like monks, all day long, and then here it comes! Bullshit. You attack like a rabid dog.

You knew they were full of shit. You knew it would come out.

And so you work yourself up into a mental frenzy, trying to anticipate their every move, waiting until you can call their bullshit.

And why? Why do you need to call out their bullshit?

So that you can try to change them.

But you can’t.

So what if you tried this instead?

Embrace the bullshit. The bullshit is fertilizer for your spiritual growth. For your self-control. For your zen buddhist inner monk to enter the room.

So when they say something that you would have called bullshit, just observe it. You won’t die. If you actually just observe, give up the need for control, and just let the bullshit go without reacting, you have chosen the space between stimulus and response.

You have not reacted. You have just stayed the same.

You realize the bullshit is not about you (hello, ego!).

You don’t feel like being on edge and miserable anymore. You let go of the desire to change anything or anyone at all, except for your own reactivity.

And guess what?

Your relationships improve. People ask you why you seem so light. Why so happy-go-lucky?

When you release other people’s bullshit, and stop trying to pick it up with a little doggy bag and analyze it, you release your own bullshit too.

You give space for the other person to be themselves, and you become more yourself, because you stop reacting to their every move; you stop behaving so co-dependently.

My bullshit, your bullshit leads to my peace, your peace.

It sounds simple but it’s hard. I spent most of my life trying to describe people’s bullshit to them so they would stop doing what they were doing that hurt me. They accused me of bullshit in return. Then we got into vicious cycles of bullshit accusations.

You’re the only one who can opt out. You can’t change other people’s bullshit. But if you stop your own bullshit, you might notice that you get less from them, too.

(Unless they have a Cluster-B personality disorder. They will see this as a challenge and keep pressing you harder. The best thing you can do here is stay far away from their bullshit.)

Now I understand what those zen masters say; people can’t hurt you, you can only allow them to hurt you.

It might sound like bullshit, but it’s true.

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