Our egos like to tell us we’re a heap of ****, so when someone is rude to us we tend to internalise the insult and get angry and all self-richeous and “how dare they” about it. Usually privately though because who wants to cause a scene and / or prolong the awful moment.
But here’s the thing, you’re not a heap of ****, so when someone insults you that’s because they are having a moment of spitefulness brought on by their own passing feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. And you have pemission to see it that way. You can acknowledge it as the spite that it is.
But you can only achieve this when you perceive yourself as NOT a heap of ****. So, what I mean to say is, stop peceiving yourself as a heap of **** (because you’re not), and you’ll be free from getting angry at other people’s insults forever.
And in fact, if you think about it, other people’s douchebaggery is helpful because you can use your reaction to it as a barometer of how much you of a heap of **** you consider yourself to be. The more angry and red in the face you become, the smellier the heap of **** is that you perceive yourself to be, the more compassionate and forgiving you are, even in the face of real unpleasantness, the less of a heap of **** you perceive yourself to be.
Make no mistake, your reaction to the world is determined by how you perceive yourself. So being compassionate and forgiving is not about doing anyone a favour? But yourself.