When someone undermines you at work, the instinct is to fight back. But according to Simone Milasas, kindness might be your most powerful weapon. Three strategies to reclaim your peace.
What’s happening: Workplace conflict is inevitable, whether it’s personality clashes, gossip, competition, or character attacks. Most people respond reactively, escalating tension and stress. But business leader and author Simone Milasas offers a different approach: three evidence-based strategies to navigate difficult people without losing your peace or effectiveness.
Why this matters: How you respond to workplace adversity directly impacts your wellbeing, career trajectory, and workplace culture. Learning to separate your self-worth from others’ opinions, find constructive meaning in conflict, and respond with integrity rather than defensiveness transforms not just your experience, but those around you.
Simone Milasas is a best-selling author, multi-business owner, and creator of the Joy of Business programmes. With three decades of entrepreneurial experience and insights featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, and Mindvalley, she has become known for her practical approach to workplace dynamics and personal development.
Whether you lead a team, manage projects, or contribute as an individual contributor, one universal truth emerges: people can be difficult. Personality conflicts, gossip, unhealthy competition, colleagues vying for your position, and outright character attacks create an exhausting landscape for nearly every working professional.
Yet most people approach these situations reactively, fighting back, defending themselves, or withdrawing. The cycle often worsens the very problems they’re trying to solve.
Milasas has spent her career studying how people navigate workplace adversity. Her conclusion is clear: there is another way.
“Whether you are a business owner, manager or employee, one of the most challenging aspects of the working world can be dealing with people,” Milasas explains. “But here’s the question that changes everything: what if you could interact with every type of person and adverse situation without being negatively affected by any of it?”
The answer, according to Milasas, lies in three practical strategies that transform how you experience and respond to workplace conflict.
Strategy 1: Know What Is True for You
The first step is understanding what you genuinely control and what you don’t.
This lesson became visceral for Milasas years after publishing her personal memoir, Getting Out of Debt Joyfully, in which she detailed her journey from $187,000 in debt to financial stability. One morning in Italy, her PR agent’s frantic messages arrived: a damaging book review had been published on a high-profile platform, calling her work “snake oil” and ruthlessly mocking her financial advice and credentials.
Her initial reaction was panic. She had written the book vulnerably, sharing stories of stumbling, falling, and rebuilding. To be publicly vilified felt like a direct assault on her character.
Rather than immediately strategise a response, Milasas took time to process. “I said to my PR agent, ‘I need a moment to be with this. Let me go have a shower and then we can discuss what action to take,'” she recalls.
In that quiet moment, clarity arrived. “You know what? I am okay. This is my story. I use the tools I talk about. They work. They changed my whole financial reality. Nobody knows me or my life like I do and I know what is true for me,” Milasas says.
This realisation applies directly to workplace dynamics. You cannot control what colleagues say, how they behave, or what opinions they form about you. Attempting to dictate others’ narratives is a misuse of energy.
“The dynamics of dealing with difficult people are consistent,” Milasas explains, “and one of the greatest lessons to learn is that you cannot control other people. You do not get to dictate what they say or how they behave. Trying to change what you cannot change is a misuse of energy.”
Instead, she advocates clarity and self-honesty. “Be honest with yourself. Clarify what you know to be true and confidently stand with that. At the end of the day, if you are happy with yourself and your choices, that is enough.”
This doesn’t mean ignoring legitimate concerns or avoiding necessary conversations. It means stopping the internal exhaustion of defending yourself against opinions you cannot change.
Strategy 2: Find the Gift in All Situations
Difficult situations rarely feel like gifts. Yet Milasas argues that even the most challenging workplace scenarios contain lessons and opportunities if you’re willing to look for them.
Consider a concrete example: a colleague believes they could do your job better and is actively attempting to take your position. The outcome would harm you directly. So what’s the response?
“The reality is, as much as you may not like or agree with their perspective, they are allowed to have it,” Milasas says. “That doesn’t mean they are right or wrong. It simply means that this is what they have concluded.”
This distinction between accepting someone’s perspective and accepting it as truth is crucial. It creates space for action rather than victimhood.
“Recognising this can provide peace and empower you to take action on things that you can change whilst simultaneously letting go of what you cannot,” she notes.
If you find yourself stuck resisting a difficult person or situation, Milasas offers a powerful reframe. “Ask, ‘What is right about this person that I am not getting? What is right about this situation that I am not getting?’ Asking these questions can disrupt the autopilot of negativity and shift your focus to the gifts of the situation, and dare I say even the person, that you may not have been previously able to see.”
The shift in focus is not trivial. “Remember,” she emphasises, “what you focus on always grows.”
This doesn’t mean toxicity should be tolerated indefinitely. Rather, it means approaching conflict with curiosity rather than judgment, a stance that often reveals information, patterns, or opportunities previously obscured by defensiveness.
Strategy 3: Choose Kindness Over Resistance
The instinct to fight back when facing judgment, slander, or aggressive colleagues is understandable and human. Yet Milasas argues this response often backfires, feeding the very conflict you’re trying to resolve.
She points to the psychological principle articulated by Carl Jung. “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
Instead of fighting, Milasas advocates a radically different approach. “What if the next time someone is difficult or is playing downright dirty, you pause and ask, ‘What kindness can I be today? What generosity of spirit can I choose? How can I reach out and engage in a different way?'”
This suggestion often meets resistance. In workplace cultures that prize toughness, choosing kindness can appear weak or naive, as though you’re allowing others to walk over you.
But Milasas challenges this assumption directly. “Choosing kindness in the face of conflict and adversity is sometimes misidentified as weakness and can be seen as being a doormat, but in the words often attributed to Latin writer Publilius Syrus, ‘You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.'”
The evidence supports this. Research on workplace culture consistently shows that kindness, consistency, and integrity inspire others far more effectively than defensiveness or aggression.
“When colleagues and co-workers are being difficult, choose to be true to yourself, let go of trying to change opinions and act with kindness in the face of adversity,” Milasas advises. “Your actions will inspire others.”
Maintaining Perspective
A final thought from Milasas reframes the entire experience of workplace difficulty. “For every challenging person you encounter, there are more who are grateful for you. Slander, competition and hostility can seem dominating, but the reality is that gratitude is far greater, so focus on that.”
The path forward isn’t about eliminating difficult people or situations, an impossible task. Instead, it’s about shifting your internal relationship to those situations.
“As you go through life, you have some phenomenal journeys as well as hardships and hurdles,” Milasas concludes. “Do not allow other people’s points of view and judgements stop you. You can open doors to possibilities by being you and choosing what is true for you. You got this.”
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