Question: Many people have told me that I complain a lot about the people I meet and have to work with. What can you say to someone who is frustrated with the way some people act?

Answer: The most important thing here is to know that we create our own reality. What does that really mean? On a deep level we set up the box of signs of what we want to see. We may want evidence that someone loves us: they call after work, bring the milk home, and things like that. If we are looking for love, we search to see all the evidence that the person loves us. If we want to see the opposite, we search for the proof that confirms that. But it’s our mind that sets up the box of limits that proves what we really want to see.

Buddhists use a different language to say the same thing. For example, they say that everything on the outside is a reflection of what’s inside. We only see what we know. We only see what’s in our consciousness. As we get to know someone, we see what is similar to us, and if there is enough similarity, we put them in the “I like” category. We have to have an open mind to explore someone who is dissimilar. They are there for a reason; perhaps they are a gate for something beyond what we know. There’s got to be something behind the dissimilarity. The person who hates someone, behind the hate is something powerful. We need to open our mind and believe in change and then something we don’t know will help us move into the unknown.