Unlike the animal kingdom who are not self-aware, we humans can be our worst enemy by creating emotions that are not really warranted. We create anger when we are sad and we create doubt when we are happy. When we become introspective, we get confused as we cannot get away from the emotion that we think we feel. This self-consuming emotional storm festers until we can barely function and we lash out, or worse, shut down. We waste time and energy in the process and unfortunately for a lot of us, we make this cycle a habit.
We waste so much of our day in drama. We might not exhibit the vocal type of drama by sharing our stories with anyone who will listen. We may not go out of our way to create drama within our circle of friends, but we have personal drama. We stew over being cut off in traffic, we get ticked off when a person takes the last on-sale item on the shelf right before you get there, we get annoyed when a telemarketer calls us for the third time today. These annoyances occupy such a small part of our day, yet we can sometimes take hours getting over them. The personal drama drain will suck the life right out of us if we let it.
The reason why we allow our emotions to get the better of us is that we believe we have no control over the situation. We look for another person to blame. But the reality is that we have complete control over our situation in the way of our reaction. It doesn’t matter what happens to us, we always have control over our reaction to it. If we remain calm when we are being pushed around, we get stronger. If we keep our cool in an argument, we may just see the other person’s point of view. It is not easy to remain in control of every situation but if we make it a habit to remain in control of our emotions each time they are called upon, we will notice that we will have much more time to learn and react much more appropriately to every situation.
ACTIVITY – Think about the last time you were angry -maybe you are angry right now. Reflect by writing in your journal or if you don’t have a journal, just write in a notepad somewhere about this time that you felt angry. Really take some time to reflect and expose the true reason why you were angry, were you cheated? Were you wronged? Were you hurt? Were you playing the victim? Were you confused? Be truthful. Then tomorrow morning, read your thoughts out loud to yourself in the mirror. How did you feel then?
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Yves Doucet, CEO and Culture Coach Dovico
Blog co-author Jeff Nagle
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