How To Become a Low-Maintenance Person

Be Prepared to Accept Substitutes. Even Do Without

What, No Creamer! You normally drink your coffee with creamer and Splenda. Typically when you have your cuppa, both are available. What happens when one of them is out? Do you have a someone took my purple pens melt-down? That’s high maintenance. The low maintenance response… Accept a substitute.  Perhaps, even do without. Life’s better when you are low maintenance.

Understand That Stuff Happens

Now Look What You Have Gone and Done! Someone loses something. Or breaks something. Or accidentally causes a mess –spills a glass of soda on an expensive sofa or carpet, for instance. Do you fly into a rage? Deliver a choice lecture complete with threats and ultimatums. If it’s a child, impose a punishment. That’s high maintenance. Only on Planet Lack of Imagination, do these things NEVERRRRR EVERRRRRR happen. The low maintenance response…. Say “It’s okay” and make the person feel less bad about the incident. Especially if they didn’t mean to do it. Or if they are too young to know what they have done.  (Confession – I was horrible about things like this until, as my post The Path To Change narrates, I underwent a change 7 years ago in response to my mother’s death.  I am so grateful for all the low-maintenance people who showed me there was a better way.) Life’s better when you are low maintenance. A True Story From the Past… The Wine Glasses Some friends of a friend of mine were over at his place for wine, and one of them accidentally dropped an expensive wine glass of his and broke it. My friend, famous for his graciousness, immediately declared “the party’s a success, the party’s a success”. But the person who broke the glass wouldn’t be consoled, and went on and on about how bad she felt about the broken glass and how the set of wine-glasses would now be incomplete as a result of the broken wine glass. When no amount of placation worked, my friend shut her up by saying “I don’t care about these wine glasses. Here, see…. “. And saying that, he emptied his own glass and dropped it on the floor where it broke.  Plonk! Before the other friends could react, he instructed them to drop and break their glasses as well. Plonk!

Be Prepared to Overlook, Excuse and Forgive

I Am So Pissed! Do the people in your life say the wrong things? Do the wrong things? Interrupt you? Make jokes about you that you don’t like (how dare you suggest I am not from New York)? Backbite about you? Spill your secrets? Undercut you? Neglect or overlook you? Leave you out? Misrepresent you? Welcome to the world. An emotional outburst of angry words and gestures, tears, threatening to sue, in response to any of this, is high maintenance. Secretly hoarding grudges and resentments, only to vent at a later time, is high maintenance, too. Switch to a low maintenance response. Understand that people are human. Accept that they have their own priorities. And will goof up and make mistakes. Overlook. Talk things out. Excuse.  Forgive. Move on. Life is better when you are low maintenance.

Stop Being Suspicious About Other People

I Smell A Rat! It’s easy to imagine that everything anyone says and does has something to do with us. And there are diabolical schemes going on behind our backs. It is related to the fact that information is asymmetrical. We can never know all the facts applying to other people’s decisions and actions. We can never know all the light and dark in their souls. Therefore there is a temptation to suspect people and look for clues to support the deception. People are too suspicious of each other in general. And it’s all so high maintenance. Everyone second-guessing each other all the time. We need to make a pledge to stop ourselves when the germ of mistrust begins. To be upfront and address our suspicions with whomever it is we are suspecting, wherever possible. Besides, even with all the facts, we may never know the truth. Life's like that.  We've got to take it as it is. Life is better when we are low-maintenance. A Tale From the Past Once when I moved advertising jobs, the company I moved to asked me to join them without a pay hike. They informed me I was earning more than what their copywriters at a comparable level were earning. I accepted, because the agency was a bigger better agency with more opportunities for creative advancement.  When I told this to the folks at the company I was leaving, I thought they would take this at face value; I later learned they thought I was lying, because “what person would move to a new job without an increase in salary??????!”  An example of asymmetrical information leading to mistrust of a person’s words.

Give up My Way or The Highway

Where Did You Learn To Drive, You Bozo! Do you get mad when people don’t do things the way you told them to? Or think they ought to? My way or the highway. That’s high maintenance. Road rage and other forms of “you bozo” thinking are big marker of high maintenance. It comes from thinking you are better than everyone else. When in fact, you just have different priorities from other people. If you understand that everyone has their own fears, their own physical state and their own comfort level... Everyone has their own priorities; Everyone has their own levels of motivations, skills, energy... you will be able to give up the ‘my way or the highway’ attitude to life. Which, in any case, usually turns out to be foolishly florid. How many times have you overtaken a slow car and flipped the bird at the driver - only to find that he/she is only a car or two behind you 10 miles later for all your show of bravado? Sheesh. Been there, done that. So pointless. Life is much better when you are low maintenance.

Become Less Neurotic

There, Now Look What You Made Me Do! It’s easy to blame someone else for whatever we feel and do. That’s high-maintenance. Try relaxing a bit. And focusing on non-blame. And looking at things with a little perspective. Knock down those neurotic walls with or without professional help. Life is better when you are low maintenance.

Give Up Your Hot Buttons

I Am Not Going To Stand For This! If people have to say to each other, “don’t talk about this or that when he’s around”, if people have to hide things from you because of your predictable negative reactions, you are high maintenance. Give up your hot buttons. People should be able to talk to you about anything. Challenge yourself not to get worked up when someone attacks your “sacred cows” or worships at altars you feel strongly opposed to. As long as there is a “truth gap” between you and someone else, it means they are afraid of your hot buttons. Become more open to other viewpoints. Life is better when you are low maintenance.

Learn To Be Patient

I Don’t Have All Day! Patience is the hallmark of a low maintenance person. Learning to wait. At the end of a telephone line. For someone to pick us up. For someone to come out of a store. For someone to come home. For something to be fixed. For someone to finish using a phone (thank heavens for cellphones!) For an office meeting to take place. In traffic. At a checkout line. Negotiating waiting time with patience is an art. But the more we learn to do it, the better our lives will be. Because almost every day, we are going to be made to wait. Life is better when we learn to do it. Life is better when we are low maintenance.

Quick summary of how to become low maintenance:

• Give up my way or the highway
• Be less suspicious of everyone’s intentions
• Understand that different people have different priorities
• Stop being neurotic
• Be more open
• Learn to be patient

Note – I became better at all of this through self-study and meditation. I urge you to consider this, if you think it might help you.

Note 2 : The place for high maintenance is tv.  Kudos to Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady for figuring out that high maintenance makes great tv :):):)

Thanks for reading and see you next week……M, a Pearl Seeker like you!