Just me and everyone else

I'll echo a phrase Dan's used in his posts before: simple, not easy.
As Dan wrote in his post, we spent the majority of our time talking about the communication process and the impact of people on our efforts, our business and our lives. I came to the realization that there has rarely been a time in my life that I've been confronted with a business problem I haven't been able to solve. That would sound to me like the recipe for a very successful career. Yet, I'm not sure I've ever experienced more or less job satisfaction than the next person. Why? Because it's about people, not problems.
I use the analogy (slightly altered, writer's license) of a business owner walking through his store and complaining that he could get more done if it weren't for all the customers packing his store. People can make our jobs, and by extension our lives, more rewarding. Watching an employee grow in their knowledge and skills to the point they take their performance to a completely new level is wonderful. There is tremendous power in creating a positive working relationship with a colleague that becomes the springboard for great achievement. Large problems can be made smaller when you have this type of relationship in place.
But the opposite is also true. There are, and always will be, people who bring little more than negativity and headaches to our lives. Unlike the strong relationships, little problems are made larger and large problems become nearly insurmountable. If you're like me, you've run into this everywhere you've been. It's a fact of life.
The question I've started to explore is: how am I going to deal with this? As Dan indicates, you can't change anyone else. The effort, then, is internal. I can't change how anyone else acts but I do control how I react. As a younger man I considered this a form of "losing". In other words, I was the one making the change and that seemed to reward the other person for their bad behavior. As I've matured, I take a different view. They have their side of the story and if I find it difficult to work with them for reason A, it's likely that they find it difficult to work with me for reason B. At the end of the day, it's still about results and you need the collaboration of people (both those you like and those you don't) to succeed. It's a simple proposition, but personal dynamics make it far from easy. Perhaps the real reward is in the effort. Like the old saying goes, "If it was easy they wouldn't call it WORK".