Welcome to this week’s edition of The Sunday Bagel. I am a musician who likes to write about the creative process and the variety of topics that come up in this journey.
I believe that many of the situations that we encounter day to day are interrelated, and I personally like to relate these situations to the creative process as you’ll see in this week’s tip below.
Here’s a juicy yet challenging topic for you - dealing with difficult people. It’s relatable to everyone because we all have to deal with difficult people at some point in our lives. And the funny thing is, they might not even be a difficult person, but the way the two of us clash makes it difficult.
Something funny that I just thought about is: What happens when a difficult person encounters someone even more difficult than themselves? Do the difficult traits cancel each other out and they just get along perfectly?
Now the reason I bring this topic up today is I have a technique for you to try out. In the moment of dealing with a difficult person, there’s not much you can do about it. You are basically watching a movie.
Don’t feel like you need hostage negotiation-quality skills to handle the person in question. The real magic happens after the fact when you’re left ruminating about what to do about it.
My trick is called Return to Sender. You tell yourself that you are not willing to take this person’s garbage or baggage on, and you politely tell the universe that you would like to send the package back to the sender for them to deal with it themselves.
I suggest a similar technique for dealing with the stress of doing creative work. When it’s time to play music or write, it’s common to be overcome with a blanket of anxiety that tells you that you’re not good enough or smart enough (The Resistance).
Try to find the source of the anxiety and politely ask to return it to the sender. If you can’t identify the source of the anxiety, then just return it to the general post office which is the universe.
I wanted to give a shoutout to the Reco-Mindo-O ebook that I started reading this week by
. It’s a compilation of mindful strategies for work and life that come from the newsletter. I have seen many of these through the newsletter itself but it’s great to have them in one place.Last week’s newsletter has all the info about my latest music release When Everything Disappeared Twice. I got a lot of great feedback on this one so if you haven’t heard it yet, please check out the edition below.
Thanks for reading and see you next week 🙂
Elliott