How to Deal with Insults

Key points

Our instinctive responses to an insult are, in fact, the weakest ones.

Instead of getting angry or returning the insult, we should distance ourself.

Taking offense is a reaction that is entirely within your control to manage.

The first step is dealing with insults is to ascertain that the insult truly is an insult. Whenever someone insults us, we ought to consider three things: whether the substance is true, whom it came from, and why. If the substance is true or conceivably true, the person it came from is known to be fair-minded, and their motive is benevolent, then the insult is not an insult so much as a statement of fact, and, moreover, one that could be very helpful to us. Hence, we seldom take offence at our parents or teachers, whom we know to have our best interests