Responding and reacting

The way you would react when you’re angry, upset, frustrated or annoyed is not the same way you’d respond when you’re calm and relaxed.

Of course this is fairly obvious, yet how many times have you allowed your feelings to get the better of you instead of simply taking some time.

What ends up happening is you regret it later because now you’re calm, now you can see that actually this other person was trying to be helpful, in fact you agree with them. Maybe you look back and feel like the way you reacted didn’t even make sense.

Now that you’re calmer you can play out in your mind, the way you wish you had responded.

And then you can hold onto that and remember it for next time.

It might be easy but it’s not helping

Right now is a difficult time for a lot of people.

One of the easiest things you can do is read every article, keep up with live news updates online or on TV, scroll social media and panic.

But the chances are those things aren’t actually helping. Knowing the ever’changing stats of cases in countries across the globe is probably not going to bring you comfort or put your mind at ease.

Most people use social media in excess on a normal day but it’s likely that things have been ramped up even further recently.

Seeing people tell you what they think you should think or how they think you should feel might only add to your frustrations, not soothe them.

And so right now it’s worth being a little more intentional about what you’re consuming.

You don’t need to keep up with everything.

How cogs perform

The end of the year is the time when performance reviews happen.

I had mine recently and it ended with me having a pretty major mind shift.

The conversation about my performance wasn’t bad in fact it was just good enough but that was the problem. I guess I could say I’ve had a cog-ish kind of year (as in a cycle of just showing up, doing what I’m told and then going home).

But instead of getting caught in a cycle of frustration towards myself I thought I’d use the situation as a growth point.

I have the opportunity to be better next year. I have the chance to change how I show up at work and be generous, kind, helpful, to speak up, share ideas, be vulnerable, work hard, pick myself instead of waiting to be picked and to be a linchpin.

Funnily enough that opportunity has always been available, I just have to commit to it.

It’s a two way thing

When someone doesn’t want what you’re offering.

In a post called generous projection, I wrote about how when people try to help, they might just be projecting. I wrote it with a focus on the receiver but what about when you’re the one trying to help.

We often say things like I’m here if you wanna talk etc with the expectation that the other person will want to talk to us. We might even get frustrated if they don’t, but you have to remember it’s really not about you.

When you make someone an offer it might be useful to remember that they don’t have to accept.

The push-back

Because every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

I’ve been using the term push-back for a while. I use it to refer to how we react to negative/un-ideal circumstances.

But not any reaction just the specific ones often done when our emotions are heightened and we’re angry or frustrated.

Imagine you’re a kid and you’re parents refuse to give you the freedom you desire. It’s quite likely that you’ll be annoyed and find some way (even if it’s small) to rebel.
Maybe that’s always coming home late or creating a secret life for yourself like haha I’ll show you.

Or as an adult maybe you have lots of goals and plans and someone tells you to slow down or that you’re doing too much. If that’s not what you’re happy to hear you might end up just doubling down on all your stuff and possibly burning out. That’s a form of pushing back.

However, there are other ways that you can choose to handle or manage situations. For example, you’re trying to get your book published you get 101 rejections so you decide to self publish.

It’s a reaction to an un-ideal situation but it isn’t out of anger or frustration. A push-back could have been getting rid of your book or replying to the rejections in anger and frustration. But you have to think about what’s actually helpful.

It might feel good to push-back but it might be more helpful to think about what the kindest and most helpful thing you can do for yourself to overcome the situation is.