Who really ruined your day?
Jason December 22nd, 2007
Basics. I love basics. I love them because getting a grip on the basics makes big changes happen. Here’s one of my favorites…
When was the last time you heard (or said) one of the following:
“… really makes me mad.”
“… it just ruined my whole day.”
“… drives me crazy.”
“… gets on my nerves.”
… you get the idea. Negative statements about how some person or thing caused you to react… well… negatively. Most people, including myself, can attest to having made statements like this at some point. Probably recently. Probably regularly.
The truth is, of course, that nothing and no one outside of yourself causes you to be mad, upset, or crazy… and they certainly aren’t responsible for ruining your day. You are.
Yup, here we go again… It’s your responsibility to decide how you want to react. If you get mad, then for whatever reason that’s programmed in your psyche, you wanted to get mad. You wanted to feel crazy. You wanted to have an excuse to write off the day and pout.
Subconsciously, of course. Consciously, you know it’s not the best way to respond, so the simple escape from this accountability is to blame whatever outside source is most convenient.
Getting emotionally out of whack rarely helps a situation. Oh, it can seem to, short-term. You can beat someone down with your anger, and feel better because you got to “vent”. But, long-term, it’s always damaging.
So, unless we want to constant be at the mercy of things you cannot control (namely, other people’s attitudes and behaviors), we need to learn to respond to situations, not react. Big difference.
Responding involves thinking, consciously making choices, then acting.
Reacting is a knee jerk. It’s involuntary. It’s entirely a product of conditioning.
Everything you’ve experienced thus far in your life has conditioned you with the situational responses you currently have. They’re just waiting to be tapped at any moment. To make a scientific analogy, these are like “potential energy”, that when triggered into a reaction, become “kinetic energy.”
I know there are therapies like hypnosis, NLP, and all kinds of other psychological whiz-bangs available designed to help you reprogram your subconscious patterns. I personally have little experience with any of them, so I cannot speak on that.
Personally, I’ve only found one real solution to take control back over your emotions, reactions, and responses, and that’s practice. To me, this makes sense… everything you’ve ever learned and gotten good at took practice. Consistent, conscious effort, applied methodically, improves performance.
Make the decision of how you want to handle yourself in situations. Visualize yourself responding in the manner you want to. Get a picture of what the ideal “you” is like. How you walk, talk, and handle yourself. Emotionally connect with that vision…. how does it feel to be that person. Guess what… that person is already inside you. You just need to bring him or her out!
The first, and most important, step here is to take ultimate responsibility for your own emotions. It is not the other fellow’s fault that you got mad. He’s responsible for his actions, and you’re responsible for you re-actions. Stop blaming outside sources. Now. From this foundation, you can now start the process of disciplining yourself to flow through your daily life on your terms, because you’re no longer turning the power and control over to an outside source.
Sounds great… sounds easy. Takes lots of consistent practice. And practice is never done, because we can always improve upon the vision of our ideal selves. It will take effort, plenty of time, and you must be honest with yourself through the process.
Remember, it’s taken your whole life up to now to learn your current reactions. Now, you’re simply taking control to decide what reactions and responses you want to have.