Coaching practices for Loving Kindness Difficult People

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Loving Kindness Difficult People, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• There’s one particular person I can’t even think about without my whole body tightening with resentment
• There’s one person I can’t stop resenting, and the bitterness loops in my head and exhausts me
• My care only reaches the handful of people closest to me and stops cold at strangers, and I want to slowly stretch that circle outward
• My warmth only flows to the few people I already love and stops dead at everyone else
• There’s one person I keep replaying with a knot of resentment, and they’re living rent-free in my body even when they’re nowhere near me

Practices that may help

1. Compassion meditation for widening the circle
   Extend deliberate well-wishing to people you find difficult, building non-aversion before you encounter them.
   Ahimsa: Non-Violence as a Daily Practice
2. Work the difficult-person stage without forcing
   Extend metta to a difficult person not as approval of their actions but as unconditional goodwill for their wellbeing.
   Metta Bhavana: The Practice of Loving-Kindness
3. Widening the circle of care
   Extend the well-wishes outward in stages: loved one, neutral person, difficult person, all beings.
   Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation
4. Expand metta through the five traditional stages
   Systematically extend goodwill from self to benefactor to friend to neutral person to difficult person.
   Metta Bhavana: The Practice of Loving-Kindness
5. Loving-kindness toward a difficult person
   Deliberately offer goodwill to someone you struggle with, to loosen resentment’s grip on you.
   Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation
6. Always abide by the three principles
   Maintain your vow, don’t show off, and practise impartially with everyone — not just the people you like.
   Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
7. Loving-kindness toward yourself
   Begin by directing the well-wishes inward — “may I be safe, happy, healthy, at ease.”
   Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation
8. Send yourself the same loving wishes you send others
   Expand loving-kindness practice inward — toward yourself as you would toward a beloved friend.
   The Self-Compassion Break
9. Include acts of kindness toward yourself
   The kindness architecture that builds well-being includes self-directed kindness — not just other-directed.
   Acts of Kindness, Made Practical
10. Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation
    Loving-kindness (metta) meditation cultivates warmth and goodwill by silently repeating phrases of well-wishing — first toward yourself, then widening in circles to loved ones, neutral people, difficult people, and all beings. Research suggests it can increase positive emotion and feelings of social connection; its links to self-compassion are promising but the literature is smaller and more mixed than for mindfulness.

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.