There have been many times in the past I’ve found myself wanting to scream at the top of my lungs from the top of a mountain somewhere. Anywhere but in the place of frustration I was in at the time, with my partner biting his lip on the sofa pondering whether to sidle out of the front door when I wasn’t looking or to risk offering grumpy me another cup of tea.
The cause of these frustrations? Invariably something that was, in hindsight, totally trivial and most importantly entirely unavoidable.
And then I read that we can change how these situations make us feel purely by making a conscious change to the way we view them – our own thoughts are pretty much the only thing we have the potential to have complete control over.
This didn’t make much sense to me at the time but I thought I’d give it a go – I mean, why not? It was that or feel like a lit firework every time someone cut me up in my car or the girl at the checkout continued to tell her colleague how crap her boyfriend was whilst dropping my change on the counter instead of into my outstretched hand.
So, here it is, a list of a few every day things that seem to irritate the life out of most people and ways in which we can perhaps choose to see them a different way, breathe deeply and find the calm. There really are some things we just need to let go……
Traffic jams –
You’re due at your friend’s party at 8pm, it’s already ten past and it just happens to be that friend whose ‘you’re late again’ face makes you feel like a 5 year old kid again. Yep it’s frustrating staring at the back of a van for god knows how long, but regardless of how much you stress, honk your horn, curse the people who you assume have probably just slowed down to gawp at a plastic bag at the side of the road, that queue ain’t gonna move any faster than if you just take a deep breath and suck it up.
Turn this around – you’re going to be late regardless of how stressed or how calm you are. You can deal with Little Miss Disgruntled when you eventually get there. How often do you get to sit still, with no one making demands of you and with nothing to do but relax?
You’re not going anywhere so take the time to breathe…. just breathe deeply and count backwards from 10 to 1 and once you start to feel the stress lift turn on the radio and just take the time to listen to the music.
Or make a mental list of places you’d like to visit, imagine your perfect day or just thank your lucky stars that you’re not involved in the accident or breakdown that most likely caused the jam in the first place.
Self Service Checkouts –
or, more to the point, what they say and that damned smarmy voice they say it in.
When they work they’re fab, when they don’t they’re just plain frustrating. “Unexpected item in bagging area”. Shout out ‘She’s a thief’ why don’t you?! Yes love, that’s the broccoli I just scanned and you made a beeping sound just as the word broccoli and the price of the broccoli appeared on YOUR screen which led me to believe it was okay to put it in the bagging area. Make your mind up.
Mmm, what to do? Suppose we can just stand there huffing and puffing and getting hacked off with the poor shop assistant who is dealing with five other customers with the same problem or we can just bite the bullet and wait our turn (perhaps with a fleeting feeling of gratitude that we’re in a position to be able to afford food so what’s a minor delay in the grand scheme of things?).
Plus, it’s technology and it isn’t foolproof; yet we have come to expect perfection from it and bizarrely lose our pieces every time there’s a blip. It’s gonna happen occasionally so whilst you’re there, try thinking about all the times you’ve used one where there has been no delay and you’ve swanned out of the shop feeling all self-sufficient.
Well, apart from if that same shop assistant came over and pressed the button that says ‘Customer is clearly over 25’ but didn’t even ask if they could see your ID. Then you can feel a bit miffed!
People on public transport with ear pods but you can still hear their music –
Pause. Listen. Think. Do you like the music. Yes? Then listen to it and enjoy it. No?
Then there are three options 1) Put in some li’l ear pods of your own 2) Move seats 3) Ask the ‘offending’ music lover to move seats (this is however unfair and secondly, unlikely to work and more likely to erupt into a ‘YouTube’ worthy confrontation with you looking like the bad guy).
Bottom line – this is just another person, enjoying their music with probably no idea it’s even annoying you. Getting annoyed at them but not doing anything to sort it out is totally and utterly pointless and a sure fire way to raise your blood pressure whilst ear pod bod is blissfully calm, tapping his foot to the beat of the latest ‘toons’ and oblivious to the fuming pressure pot next to them. (See ‘Traffic Jams’ – breathe!)
Snow/Hot Weather/Any Weather –
We have weather, it’s part and parcel of every day life. We cannot change it but boy, can we moan about it!
Put on a coat. Put on a swimming cossie. Put up an umbrella. Put up with it and smile. One thing we absolutely cannot change is the weather and no amount of whining ‘Ooh it’s so cold’ is going to warm us up. Maybe we should just marvel at how beautiful the changing seasons are and that we’re still alive to see them!
Positive People –
Well, they sure beat negative ones. I heard something pretty baffling once “I prefer not to get too excited about anything, that way I’ll never be disappointed”.
Sure, positive people get disappointed too sometimes but they have a far happier journey getting there! And there’s nothing really that wrong with disappointment, as long as we allow ourselves to experience it, hopefully learn something from it and then move along. It’s only a problem when we keep reliving the experience in our heads.
We’re not all the same and part of not getting wound up about people who are different to us is being able to accept that they’re different, respect their outlook and exercise our right and ability to choose the people we hang around with.
People who answer their phones or reply to a message half way through a conversation with you –
got me on this one, this is just plain rude and disrespectful. Often enough though, rude person does not consider they’re being rude and we’re totally within our rights to point this out – tactfully. Doing what my ex did when he snatched his mate’s phone off him then dropped it in his beer is probably a bit extreme! Funny, but definitely didn’t defuse the situation.
Tactfully suggest to Mr/Mrs/Miss Ignoramous that they wouldn’t be too chuffed if you were chatting to them and then just turned around half way through the convo and starting chatting to another person in the room – answering their phone mid-conversation is no different at all.
Hopefully they’ll get it – and even if they don’t you will have at least put your very valid point across which, in itself, will make you feel better.
(Also see ‘our right and ability to choose the people we hang around with’).
Drivers who don’t indicate (and other insignificant driving indiscretions)
– beeping and calling them a d*ck isn’t going to make them instantly roadworthy. They will have absolutely no idea why you beeped them. They’re just going to get arsey with you for having the nerve to ‘tell them off’ and now we’ve got two hacked off people, one of whom still doesn’t know where they’re going. Helpful!
There are so many things in every day life that have the potential to wind us up and the vast majority of these are unavoidable. If we can’t change it then there is absolutely no point whatsoever in getting wound up about it. By all means feel the anger but nip it in the bud before it engulfs you.
If we can change it then we just need to feel the frustration, breathe deeply and spring into action. Worry and stress are important – as with all emotions it is so important that we allow ourselves to feel them. They are emotions that help us to reconcile with sad or upsetting situations and take the necessary action we need to take to deal with them or resolve them.
They are only harmful when we allow them to constantly control our thoughts and actions.
A big part of reconnecting with ourselves is knowing why we feel the emotions we feel. Anger and stress are powerful feelings. However, while we’re wasting our time and damaging our health by allowing ourselves to feel them unnecessarily we’re not giving ourselves the space to think, breathe and feel anything calming, embracing or productive.
Life is so much simpler and calmer when we save our worrying and frustrations for the things that warrant it – not drivers on the road, Christmas queues, snow, rain, sunshine and certainly not a machine at the supermarket that has an aversion to your veg.
Feel. Breathe. Let it go.
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