A few years ago I was working with a colleague who was very difficult, for a reason unknown to me she did not like me at all. This meant that she would find a lot of faults in my work and to make matters worse she was very close to my manager and very soon my manager started to find a lot of faults in my work, Very soon I was stressed out, I was struggling to sleep and if I got to sleep i would wake up in a panic. This carried on for three whole months, I tried to do all I could to make it stop, I would stay half an hour late and not claim the time back. I did everything I did to improve things in the work place but no matter what did; things did not get any better. I went from anxious to just angry, why was this person trying to cause so much trouble for me? Does she know what I have gone through? One night I got out of bed went down stairs and I started doing the washing up which I was supposed to do a few hours earlier, that was when it came back to me, the words of the great Les Brown in one of his Videos * If you don’t handle it with grace it will stay in your face”. With those words in my mind I went back to bed and I had the best sleep I have had in months.

What changed that night? I realised that I was not handling the situation very well, my colleague had their own agenda and I was falling into it and I was letting it affect all the aspects of my life. Looking at the situation I realised that my colleague was looking to feel important because they did feel like they were important and the only way they thought they would do this was by pointing faults in my work. No matter what I was going to do this person was always going to find something wrong because that was their mission. It does no matter how hard or how long you work; if someone wants to find faults in what you are doing they will find it. No human being is perfect and if you look had enough you will find something that is wrong about every person you meet. The truth is that there are always people who will do you wrong, who will wrongly criticise and who will do the best they can to put you down. There are going to be good times on the journey and there are going to bad times but what separates the really successful people from the majority is that they have learnt to handle everything with grace. What situation are you going through which is affecting so much of your life today? Remember, if you don’t handle it with race it will stay in your face.