I just read a bunch of articles by James Altucher – I hadn’t heard of the guy before but ran into one of his articles and ended up spending a bit of time on his site navigating his posts.   Lots of good stuff there.  One of the posts mentioned his view of the four types of people in the world and how to deal with them. I found this so useful, I thought I’d synthesize it here:

1. Happy People: People who are genuinely happy with their lives at this moment in time.

•  “For you to go from success to success you must first be sincerely happy for the people who are happy around you. Like attracts. Picture all the people you might resent. Spend five minutes a day training your brain to be happy for them. “

2. Unhappy People

• ” Try to cultivate compassion. It doesn’t mean you have to drain yourself to help those less fortunate. If you can share what you have, all the better. If you can give a word of advice, do it. What you give, comes back tenfold.”

3. Good People: This is different from “Happy”. These people legitimately want to help others.

• Be grateful for all the people good to you and think, “this guy is good. I wish I could be as good as him. I hope I can help him in any way I can.”

4. Crappy People: People who will do you harm, no matter what you do, for no reason at all.

• Remember: “When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy”
• COMPLETELY IGNORE THE EVIL PEOPLE:
  • Completely ignore them.
  • Don’t think about them.
  • Don’t talk to them.
  • Don’t write them.
  • Most important: Don’t give them advice.
  • Most important: Never gossip about them behind their backs