As product managers, we deal with lots of different kinds of people. We don’t have authority, we can only influence, and it’s a difficult place to be. There’s all sorts of people we encounter on the job and off the job that try to get under our skin. Usually these are people who have nothing they can actually do to us, which is why they’re trying to mess with us. This method only works if you have really good inner game, the practice to see yourself as separate from the emotion: Visualize that person who’s giving you shit as a chihuahua. A chihuahua that’s barking and making a lot of noise and going crazy, but is still a chihuahua behind a window pane or on a leash. If there’s a really big dog being walked down the street and there’s a chihuahua going crazy, the big dog wouldn’t react and the person wouldn’t react. They might turn their head, but they wouldn’t do much more than that. ➡️ When someone with no real power tries to get under your skin, visualize them as a barking chihuahua behind a window. You’d turn your head to acknowledge, realize they can’t actually do anything, and keep walking and forget about it.