We’ve all felt it—that feeling of dread in the pit of our stomach, the anticipation of something unpleasant coming—the person or situation we would rather avoid. Let’s face it, if we felt we had the choice, our first instinct would probably be to just run away, and yet we know we need to step up and handle it.

Avoidance, or the desire to avoid, is a big red flag indicating that you are giving your power away to a situation or a person. Maybe you are dreading the meeting with your accountant about business spending, or you are frustrated with the behavior of a competitive employee or colleague, or there’s a client who always complains. Whatever the scenario, if your first thought is, “I don’t want to deal with this,” somewhere you have judged the situation as problematic and difficult (or impossible) to change. The only choice that gives you is to keep avoiding until it grows so big you can no longer ignore it. You then go in expecting the worst with your walls up and fighting gloves on. Neither of which contributes any ease in your business or life.

The old saying goes, “What you resist, persists,” and avoidance is one of our greatest forms of resistance. How many things are you currently avoiding to the degree that it is starting to run your life and influence your choices?

Reactional thinking undermines our ability to be ourselves and show up at our peak performance. Here are 6 simple strategies you can implement to handle anyone and anything, even the things (and people) you desire to avoid the most:

1. Don’t judge yourself

You don’t have to like everyone you work with in order be productive. Not everyone is going to be best friends and not every situation is going to be ideal. What you can do is not judge yourself or others. When you let go of judgments and expectations, you begin to transcend ideas of like and dislike, or personality clashes. Instead, you can look at what can be created. Ask yourself: “What is possible to create in this situation, with this person or people?”. If you stay out of the judgment of you and of them, you can put your attention on what you can accomplish.

2. Eliminate reactive feelings and responses

With every point of view that we take, good or bad, we nurture that perspective until it becomes the reality of the situation in our minds. We are potent in our ability to influence our experience by the way we choose to see things. The less attached you are to your point of view about a person or situation, the more it loses its power. You become more able to respond in ways that are effective and contributive rather than conflictual. Anytime you feel reactive or that feeling of avoidance comes up, try this strategy of saying silently to yourself: “Interesting point of view, I have this point of view.” Say it 10 times and what happens. You may notice the “charge” on the emotion or thought you were having lightens up or goes away and you can have more clarity and ease in the situation.

3. Have allowance

You can’t make another person change or choose. What if you did not have to judge or control a situation? This doesn’t mean you have to accept a bad circumstance. Allowance is about where you get to choose what works for you. You don’t have to judge you or anyone else to choose it. When you can look at a situation without the bias of judgment or wrongness, you can ask questions like, “What else is possible here?” “Can we get around this?” “What will create the most?”.

Allowance does not mean you let people walk all over you. It doesn’t mean they dominate you. It doesn’t mean they undermine a situation, especially if that is not going to create more in your business. Be willing to choose for you. If something isn’t working, acknowledge, “This isn’t working for me, what can we change here?” and ask the person or people involved to contribute.

4. Every day, everyone gets a clean slate

One of the greatest (and weirdest) pieces of advice I was given to stop friction between myself and others, was to “destroy” my relationships every day with everyone. That sounds unusual but if you start doing this each day by saying, “I destroy my relationship to …” it gives you and them a clean slate, no longer building upon the expectations, projections, and judgments and decisions you made about them in the past, and allows a new start every day. We often determine our life today on situations that happened yesterday. This keeps us stuck in things that are not relevant anymore. This tool gives you a way forward to deal with the person or circumstance in front of you in the present, and to more effectively and easily move forward.

5. Have a sense of humor and focus on what makes you happy

It is worth putting your attention on what makes you happy, rather than what makes you mad and angry. That simple shift in attention, especially when practiced regularly, can change your entire attitude. Humor will always help you see things as less significant. The less significant they are, the less power they will have over you. Why not ask an unusual question like, “How much fun can I have with this?”. If there are people out there that you just want to avoid, don’t take it seriously. Laugh about yourself and don’t make the difficult people the most significant part of your day.

6. Be willing to artfully and creatively manage

Some people are easy to manipulate if you look at what they require and need to hear. Most times we don’t want to manipulate because we assume it’s unkind. However, manipulating is just another way of artfully managing a situation to get the best out of someone, and create a win-win. Say you have an employee that you know needs to hear how appreciative of them you are, or for you to make two minutes of small talk before you discuss business, in order for them to be receptive to you. Would you be willing to do it happily? If you are willing to know what others require from you, and you give it to them with no point of view or judgment about it, you might be surprised at what happens!

Handling the people and things you would rather avoid most times comes down to being pragmatic: in other words, willing to do what works, without a point of view.

You have always the possibility to change things. You may not be able to change others. If you are willing to use these strategies to focus on what can work, everything can turn out differently. By being yourself and not being at the effect of or in reaction to others is the best weapon you have that creates more for everyone.