There is no single way to interpret what life is, what it implies for us. One of the consequences of this is that each person develops a more positive or more negative way of seeing things, and a more flexible or more rigid mentality .

A large part of our identity comes from the way we learn to adapt to what is happening to us, to our environment. Some people tend to constantly change their strategy depending on the results their plans give when applied to reality, and some people, no matter what, continue to hold the same beliefs, opinions and attitudes.

In this article we’ll look at just what it means to be a stubborn person , and what the characteristics of this way of being are.

5 characteristics of stubborn people

Stubbornness can be more or less positive depending on the context, but it usually implies a limitation that leads us not to want to separate from an idea or strategy no matter what . Let’s see how this translates into practice.

1. are proud

Stubborn people are not stubborn simply because they honestly believe that the right thing to do is to keep behaving the way they do. They are, in part, because making a sharp turn in their attitudes, opinions, strategies or style of behaviour can wear down their image, revealing that a mistake has been made or that they are simply imperfect people who do not know in advance what will happen.

Thus, for them it is not so much the content of what they do, think or say that matters, but the idea of being consistent in what they do.

2. Improvisation is your enemy

Like all of us, stubborn people are forced to improvise from time to time. What happens is that in their case there is an added risk that things will go wrong, because if the initial decision they make turns out to be the wrong one, it is more difficult for them to correct themselves .

This is something that they themselves know, and as a consequence, based on what they are learning from their experiences, they prefer to avoid exposing themselves to situations where they have to make important decisions on an improvised basis.

3. Theory matters more to them than reality

For this type of person, on many occasions, if the theory does not correspond to reality, it is reality that is wrong . This does not mean that they have a strong desire to improve the world, given that to do this it would be necessary to make a reliable diagnosis of the problem to be intervened on. It means that they prefer to hide behind this mental rigidity in order not to face the fact that their ideas may be wrong.

4. They are interested in being seen as autonomous persons

As we have seen, stubborn people want to offer an image of coherence and to have a very reliable criterion of their own. Therefore, although not all of them want to lead teams, they tend to enjoy the possibility of being seen as intellectual references , people with a philosophy of life to take into account.

5. They have dichotomous approaches

When it comes to holding on to a belief, stubborn people need to have a justification for not taking into account all the opinions against what they do. That is why they often create “blacklists” that lead them to dismiss the ideas of others. Anything that does not justify them in this sense, is out of any consideration or self-critical reflection . In this way, doubts disappear.

What to do when dealing with them?

When dealing with stubborn people, follow these tips.

1. Don’t laugh at their mistakes

This is important, because it involves a clear confrontation. Sometimes stubbornness can lead us to develop attitudes or behaviour that look like a caricature, but that is no reason to laugh at those who maintain them. Doing so will only create discomfort and will not make them come out of their error, due to the cognitive dissonance generated : they prefer to believe that the other does not know what he is saying rather than to assume his mistakes.

2. Introduce the doubt

We have also seen that stubborn people are very radical in their thinking, and tend to see as negative anything that goes against the belief or strategy they hold no matter what. That means that directly attacking that belief or idea will not be effective .

What is useful, however, is to make the stubborn person begin to doubt them, drawing conclusions about what happens when you take those ideas to their ultimate consequences.

3. It offers a dignified way out

There is no need for it to be obvious that what he was defending with stubbornness was absurd. Whoever has held on to a belief or attitude in a radical way , will hardly do so in the short term. It is enough to ignore what happened and give the other person the opportunity to stop defending it blindly without raising laughter or critical comments.