I get upset by the words people use sometimes. Narcissistic. Egotistical. Arrogant. The reason is, words like these turn the truth upside down. They seem to say that these people are powerful; they make you feel powerless. But in fact they are just covering up their own feelings of powerlessness.

If you can distance yourself a bit from how you immediately react to them -- you see that they feel powerless and are covering it up -- then your approach to them changes...