Over the past six weeks, we’ve talked a lot about our inner caveman – the primitive instincts and emotions that formed over the first 99.9% of human history before industrialization changed everything. 

Understanding and accepting your caveman can free up a huge amount of mental energy that was previously wasted on self-defeating thought patterns.

But there is another category of self-defeating thought patterns that consume lots of mental resources: frustrations with other people. 

Resolving inner conflict about other people

Relationships, complicated as they are, often involve some conflict. Only a tiny fraction of conflict results in an all out brawl or screaming match. The vast majority just simmers beneath the surface, wasting time, draining energy and slowly souring relationships. 

There are basically three ways of managing such simmering conflict: confrontation, avoidance and tolerance.

As cowardly as it may sound, avoidance is often the best solution. If you’re clearly incompatible with another person, there are nearly 8 billion other options in the world. Just move on. 

If moving on is not an option, confrontation is sometimes the right way, but this is rare. You must have irrefutable evidence that the other person is clearly in the wrong before opening that can of worms. Confrontation on weak or biased grounds can end very badly. 

That just leaves us with a proud member of the Great Five: Tolerance.

Tolerance = accepting the caveman in others

It really pays to remember that other people, like us, are just cavemen stuck in the future. They all struggle with Craving, Ego, Sloth, Frustration and Worry. And they’re very rarely “out to get you”. 

In fact, most of our grievances with others originate from them just being their own unique selves struggling with their own unique cavemen.

We cannot control the cavemen in other people. Heck, we can barely control our own cavemen. The only thing we can control is how much we allow their cavemen to affect us.

And this control has a name: Tolerance. 

So, try out this way of thinking next time you experience strong negative emotions about someone else. Check out what happens. It could be interesting 🙂