Today, I want to share with you a challenging issue you may face: how to manage the people around you. Here, by “manage,” I don’t mean controlling them as a superior would a subordinate; rather, I mean guiding their behavior to a certain extent so that your interactions with them are more comfortable.
Let’s look at a few examples to get a sense of what I mean by “management.”
Why Manage the People Around You?
I would guess that you’ve likely experienced some unpleasant situations with the people around you:
- Your friend is often late for meetups.
- Your friend constantly asks for favors, some of which may be unreasonable.
- Your parents frequently try to interfere in your life, such as your choice of friends, career, or even pressuring you to marry.
- Your coworker regularly fails to complete tasks assigned by the boss, leaving you and others to step in as deadlines loom to prevent major setbacks for the company.
- Your boss often gives you tasks right before the end of the workday or demands you work overtime when you’ve made plans.
I’ve encountered these frustrations myself, and I imagine many others have as well. If you want to solve these issues once and for all, you need to manage the people around you effectively.
Step 1: Recognize That You Are the Most Important
The first step to managing people around you is to hold a core belief that you are more important than anyone else—more important than your parents, your spouse, and your children. Certainly, you’re more important than your friends, coworkers, and supervisors.
Without this mindset, there’s no point in proceeding. Only by treating yourself as someone of worth—a person deserving respect—can you earn respect from others, including your parents. Here, let me share some examples from my life.
How Unreasonable Expectations Are Fostered
Most of my friends are from the ‘60s and ‘70s generations, and many of them face a common issue: caring for elderly parents in their 80s or 90s. If you have elderly family members, you may understand the difference between taking care of a 70-year-old and a much older individual. Caring for the latter is far more challenging, not just because of a decline in self-sufficiency but because their sense of independence weakens as dependence increases. This dependency isn’t physical alone—it’s mostly psychological.
Many of my friends have spoken about feeling physically and mentally drained due to elderly parents. One friend, an only child, had to resign from her job in her early 50s to care for her mother. Yet, despite her sacrifice, her mother was unappreciative, leading my friend to become exhausted and even develop mild depression.
Another friend has to ensure that either he or his sibling stays in their mother’s city, though she is capable of living independently. However, whenever they’re both away for work or vacation, she suddenly falls ill. He once described his life as feeling “worse than death.”
When these friends expressed their frustration, I told them they had brought this upon themselves. And since they chose this path, they shouldn’t complain—it’s likely they’ll continue to face such issues because they’ve already spoiled their parents without managing their expectations effectively.
Many bad habits stem from indulgence. You may have noticed that when you treat people around you, whether family or friends, with unprincipled kindness, they tend to take advantage of you. Over time, they exploit you in certain ways, which is a natural outcome of indulgence.
Imagine two people sitting on a narrow bench. Ideally, each should occupy 50%, but if you yield and let the other person take 70%, they’ll soon expect to take that much. If you then suggest sharing the bench equally, they’ll likely refuse. Although we’d like to believe in mutual respect, the reality is that people often gravitate toward the easier target.
Returning to my two friends, their parents’ initial expectations may not have been high. If they were gig workers or food delivery drivers, busy all day just to have a meal, their mothers wouldn’t expect them to be around constantly. However, one of these friends has a well-off husband, and her job was a mere interest. Each time her mother asked her to keep her company, she was available, and now she barely occupies 20% of that “bench.”
The other friend has a similar situation—he earns well and has a flexible job, so whenever his mother needs something, he stops his work to help. Over time, this indulgence fostered his mother’s expectations. If we treat others like this, their demands will only increase until they’ve taken every advantage.
Some believe that elderly people act this way out of insecurity rather than a desire to exploit their children. Often, the motive is irrelevant; it’s the outcome that matters. In both cases, my friends’ quality of life was significantly affected. This habit isn’t exclusive to elderly parents—children and other close relations can take advantage as well, often without us realizing.
For example, many parents complain that their grown children are ungrateful and always taking advantage. They recount the sacrifices they made for their kids, only to receive little gratitude in return. When I hear this, I usually stop them from going on because these “sacrifices” are choices they made, and the children are unlikely to appreciate them.
My understanding of this issue was influenced by the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg. I’ll clarify that I don’t particularly like her, but the insights I gained from observing her have been invaluable, for which I am actually grateful.
There’s plenty of information online about Greta, with mixed reviews, so I won’t go into that here. If you’re interested, you can look it up. Here, I want to share the story of her and her mother.
Her mother is a musician who relies on performing with orchestras to make a living. Since Greta started advocating for extreme environmentalism, her mother could no longer use cars or planes to get to performances and had to rely on a bicycle. Naturally, she couldn’t reach places that were far away by bike, so she had to take leave and skip those engagements. Over time, her career declined, and orchestras were unwilling to hire a musician who couldn’t be consistently reliable.
Later, when reporters asked Greta if she felt guilty for causing her mother to halt her career, this now-grown woman showed no remorse, saying that it was her mother’s decision.
Greta’s response shocked me and even made me a little angry. I imagine you might feel the same—how could someone be so ungrateful? But then, I realized she was right: it really was her mother’s choice. If her mother had insisted on performing, it’s not like her daughter could have stopped her.
While Greta’s stance and attitude are extreme, it was her uncompromising approach that reminded me of an important truth: often, we sacrifice ourselves willingly to accommodate others, but they may see these sacrifices as our own choices, unrelated to them. If this can happen between parents and children, it certainly applies to friends.
These issues are ones we may all encounter, perhaps frequently. To address them, we need to start at the root. Most importantly, we must raise our own sense of self-worth and see ourselves as dignified individuals. If we don’t value ourselves, no one else will.
Living for Yourself
If I were to ask, “Who should a person live for?” I imagine many people would answer, “For oneself.” This is a truth everyone knows, yet in real life, many people end up living for others. Some live for their parents, others for their children, and some, for reasons unknown, live for Tom, Dick, or Harry—everyone except themselves.
Young people often ask me this question: “I’m studying in a big city, and my parents want me to move back to a third- or fourth-tier city after graduation. They say life is more stable there, and the whole family could be together.” They then ask my opinion. They ask me this, obviously, because they don’t want to go back but can’t find a good reason not to. Some are simply undecided.
Before answering, I always ask them, “Who do you plan to live for? To live your own life or the life someone else has planned for you?” Once they answer this, they usually have the answer to their own question. In the real world, most people end up living their own lives. But only a few truly achieve this because many don’t fully understand this idea. When facing others’ demands versus their own desires, they often give up their own desires to meet others’ expectations. For these people, the issues we mentioned at the beginning remain unsolvable.
On the other hand, if you clearly understand that you are the most important, that you must live for yourself, then the challenges I mentioned at the beginning will dissolve. You’ll be able to manage others’ expectations and attitudes toward you, and you’ll live an exciting life. For example, a friend I mentioned earlier realized she is more important than her mother. She now spends a lot of time traveling each year, and her depression has significantly improved.
