10 reasons why some people don’t get along with others …

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Have you ever known someone who just seemed unable to get along with other people?

Have you ever been that kind of person?

The Carnegie Institute of Technology has reported that 90 percent of all people who fail in their life’s vocation fail because they cannot get along with people.

That’s a serious, life-impacting problem! So let’s identify 10 reasons why some people don’t get along with others:

1. Sin. The single greatest destroyer of relationships (of any kind), peace, unity, and harmony is sin. At the core of sin is selfishness, and when we’re always looking after ourselves at the expense of others, we’ll fail in our relationships.

2. Temperament weaknesses. Temperament is that God-created, in-born part of us that determines how we respond to people, places, and things. When we allow ourselves to function from our temperament weakness rather than from our temperament strengths, we can quickly become the kind of person who doesn’t get along with other people. For example, the strength of the Choleric temperament is strong leadership ability; the weakness is a penchant for being controlling, domineering, and manipulative. No one likes that kind of person!

3. Faulty thinking. Irrational self-talk negatively skews our understanding of others and issues, and hampers our interactions with them. Patterns of cognitive distortions can become habitual, and lead us to think, assess, and respond in ways detrimental to any kind of relationship. For example. the cognitive distortion of magnification and minimization can become a habit of always magnifying errors and minimizing successes – either yours or those of others. This can make you the kind of person who doesn’t get along with others.

4. Mental illness. When a person suffers from a mental illness, it can be difficult to apply ourselves to interacting with others in a consistently positive manner. For example, a person experiencing clinical depression may want to have positive, close friendships, but may struggle with the energy to do what it takes to consistently be that kind of friend. And other people may (often will) be lacking in understanding of your mental illness; ignorance by others about mental illness often results in the stigmatizing and shunning of the person with the mental illness.

5. Lack of discipline. Usually the person who doesn’t get along with others can do better at relationships than they do, they just don’t try because they’re either unwilling or too lazy to exercise the appropriate level of self-discipline required for relational success.

6. Bad habits. Some people think that everyone should like them “warts and all” and do nothing to edit themselves, so they bring all of their bad habits into their relationships. Whether it’s chronically being late to work, not being reliable, cursing in workplace settings, or being insensitive to the needs of others, these and other habits are called “bad” for a reason – no one will like you if you persist with them!

7. Poor communication skills. Not being a good listener, and lacking the skill to communicate with someone else effectively is one of the leading problems in our interactions with others. Sometimes we’re poor communicators because of poor effort, or not caring, but often it’s because of lack of skill development in effective communications. Some good news is that anyone can learn core communication skills to help them relate effectively with other people.

8. Inflexible. Insisting not only that things go how they want them to, but that others BE like who they want them to be, is an inflexible attitude that will quickly result in not getting along with others.

9. Unwilling to accept differences. Some people are sinful enough to be unwilling to positively engage with people who are different from them. There’s no chance in getting along with others with this attitude because no chance is allowed for.

10. Don’t care. Occasionally, you’ll meet someone who doesn’t get along with others because they only care about themselves, they do not care about others.

Other than how people may respond to a person with a mental illness, all of these reasons for not getting along with others are self-inflicted sources for relational failure. That means they can all be corrected, if only a person is willing to change.

Scotty