June Eding - How to Hug a Porcupine: Easy Ways to Love the Difficult People in Your Life

Text Copyright 2009 Hatherleigh Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

How to hug a porcupine: Easy ways to love the difficult people in your life.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-57826-293-9 (alk. paper)
eBook ISBN: 978-1-57826-537-4
1. Interpersonal conflict. 2. Love. I. Hatherleigh Press. BF637.I48H69 2008
158.2dc22

2008040086

v3.1

T his book is a powerful tool.

In fact, it is a tool so powerful that, if we practice its recommendations, it can lead us towards harmony, compassion and a better world.

How?

This book reminds us that we humans have the capacity to create our attitudes and emotions, as well as our actions. If we choose to, we can maintain inner peace despite difficult outer circumstances. We can prevent unnecessary suffering.

If you allow your quills of judgment to turn inwards and pierce you, this book can help you to foster self-acceptance. If you make yourself angry at others who prick you by acting in harmful and provocative ways, the strategies offered in this book will enable you to calm and stabilize yourself. And if you mistakenly allow yourself to be pierced by others, the wisdom of the words in the book reminds you not to take it too personally!

With thoughtful, easy to follow strategies, How to Hug a Porcupine shows you how to embrace the Porcupine tendency, while still respecting the quills. You can learn to unconditionally accept yourself as well as others.

The brilliant pioneering psychologist, Albert Ellis PhD, taught that no one can upset us unless we allow them to. Instead we can choose to think rationally, feel calm, and act with consideration, kindness and empathy. We can learn not to think and act irrationally and not to automatically stick our quills out during threatening or provocative situations. Even if the Porcupinely-acting person who you are dealing with resists, your open-hearted approach will not be wasted. Every time we practice kindness, compassion and unconditional acceptance of others, we are reinforcing it within and for ourselves.

How to Hug a Porcupine makes change for a lifetime possible. This is a book that can be picked up, enjoyed and implemented at any time. In fact, it will benefit us tremendously to consult it regularly. We all benefit from reminders, and repeating these exercises will erode persistent negative tendencies. Keep practicing these principles over and over again. Share this book with others, and set an example by modeling its principles.

Life is brief. Time is precious. Wasting it in defense and attack, or in anger and fear, is regretful. Choose instead to practice patience, empathy, compassion, kindness, understanding and unconditional acceptance. Work towards creating greater harmony within yourself and in your relationships, and you will contribute to creating a healthier, saner world.

This book can be used as a dose of preventative medicine, a first-aid kit, and a healing balm, but more than anything else, it is an effective tool for emotional and mental health and well-being. Turn to it to encourage greater awareness of heart and mind.

Use it in your own life, and you will bring stability, peace and joy to yourself, others and the world around you.

D R . D EBBIE J OFFE E LLIS

W e all know people who are difficult to be around. We may run into them at work, at home, through friends, or simply whenever we are going through our day.

Unfortunately, those porcupines are not going to go away!

On the following pages you will find strategies for dealing with those prickly personalities. This is important not only because we simply dont have a choice but to deal with porcupines, but also because it is actually good for us to find ways to get along with those who are different from us.

Other people challenge us. Other people improve us. Other people make us better human beings.

A NDREW F LACH, PUBLISHER

PART I
THE NATURE AND BEING OF THE PORCUPINE

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

V ICTOR H UGO

WHY PORCUPINES?

F or centuries, cultures from around the world have used animal characteristics to identify and describe human personality traits. In Native American culture, for example, everybody in the community must undergo a mystical rite of passage to identify their animal spirit. This animal then becomes part of their name (examples include Sitting Bull, and Little Turtle). The Chinese Zodiac assigns one of 12 animals to every year, and an individuals personality is believed to be reflected in the attributes of the animal that was appointed the year that one was born. The animal characters in Aesops fables embody different attributes of human behavior, and their stories and predicaments offer lessons on human nature. Today, expressions like stubborn as a mule, wise as an elephant, and sly as a fox are still sprinkled throughout conversation.

Whether these expressions, stories, or themes are accurate or not, the way mankind draws links between animal behavior and human behavior reveals a great deal about our struggle to understand ourselves, and each other. This book seeks to help you, the reader, understand and cope with a certain type of person: those individuals who are difficult and challenging. We call these people porcupines.

Why? To answer that, we need to look at the actual behavior and habits of the porcupine.

THE PORCUPINE IN NATURE

Porcupines are rodents whose coats feature modified, spiny hairs known as quills. These quills are embedded in the skin, and a single porcupine may have over 30,000 quills in his coat. There are 27 species of porcupine, divided into two families: those found in the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (the Americas and Australia). Porcupine ancestors date from 30 million years ago. Old World porcupines live on the ground, while New World porcupines are avid tree-climbers. Although some species of porcupine eat small reptiles and insects in addition to a diet of bark, roots, fruit, meadow grass, and tubers, most species of porcupines are strictly herbivores (they eat only vegetables). Unlike most herbivores, who have to seek safety in numbers, the effectiveness of the porcupines quills as a defense against predators allows it to lead a solitary life.