Do you have a quick temper? Do you react quickly and easily to situations? Do circumstances in your life seem to dictate how you feel from day to day?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, guess what, join the club because I’m writing about me there as much as I am about you.
I’m getting much better each day at applying 1 basic principle that really helps me live relatively unscathed by circumstances which happen around me. I’ll talk about that principle below.
But before I do, let me just tell you some of the things that would set me off and see if you can relate. I’d get angry that I would always be late to meetings or late to appointments. Even if I left on time, I’d hit traffic and still be late.
A friend and I would agree to hang out and he’d just not show up even after I gave up my whole night doing something else to hang out with him. I’d think thoughts like, “Doesn’t he know I’m just as busy as he is?” “Does he think his time is more valuable than mine?” “Why doesn’t he just write things down?” and my favorite, “He better apologize big time for this!”.
Inevitably I’d get no apology and no calls, no emails saying I’m sorry.
This would make me even more upset. As if I somehow needed an action on his part to make me happy inside.
Or sometimes I’d get a parking ticket or a car would hit my car and I’d get upset because of what happened.
We have all had these experiences haven’t we? It’s not as if I’m immune from being human.
Finally I drew a line in the sand and realized that happiness doesn’t come from wanting a person to act in a certain way. Happiness doesn’t happen when I somehow accumulate certain worldly possessions. Happiness doesn’t depend on how people act around me.
And not only happiness either but even moods that happen in the moment. A person cuts you off on the highway and you react. You get angry. You take it personal. You think that that person somehow does it just to piss you off.
How you act in those situations (notice I didn’t say react) determines your ability to be happy all throughout the day. I’ve seen people get so angry when little things happen.
Why?
It’s because they’re not being a good steward of their internal world.
Protect your emotions and anchor them deep within so you have an emotional state that you’re living in and protecting before some “out of control” event happens during your day.
Lay down the emotional framework of your life and live in that state all day.
Yes things will happen. And yes you may “react” but if you have an emotional state that’s your default state, you’ll bounce back to that in a matter of seconds after some kind of stressful event.
You won’t take it personally. You’ll be able to quickly go back to that state in your mind because that’s where you always reside. That’s where you live in all day long anyway.
It’s similar to a dog. You’ll see them barking and going crazy towards another dog while you’re walking them and a few seconds later they’ll stop and shake off that stress. That’s because their default state is happiness.
In my next post I’m going to get into all the different ways of protecting your inner terrain and ways to make it stronger and part of your default “way of being” out there in the world.
When was the last time something happened in your life that got you upset? How did you respond? Comment below!
