I was thinking this morning about how I learned to choose my reaction to difficult moments. The first step is pausing in the moment when you recognize you’re likely to react in a negative, angry or frustrated way and move to a mental and emotional distance to evaluate what happened and why you feel the way you do. In short create an objective distance from the moment where you can be without emotion about the situation and evaluate it objectively.
As I think about moments I’ve encountered in the past, I was reminded of how I approached them to learn how to manage my response –
- for a moment think of yourself as a reasonably strong swimmer who has trained and knows how to help a drowning person
- picture this person as someone in a lake who is flaying and screaming for help
- you know you can’t approach her from the front because a drowning person will grab you and take you both down
- you also know she’ll likely fight the whole way to shore out of fear
- you must approach her from below and behind where she can’t reach you
- Put her in a safe carry to pull her to shore with her head above water
- she may not even appreciate what you do because she may be embarrassed, wanting all around her to believe she knows how to swim
- you only have to know you did a good thing and likely saved her from drowning, regardless of her response
When I encounter a person at work or in life who is unusually and unfairly aggressive in their behavior towards me I’ve learned to look past their behaviour and realize the person is likely hurting, afraid, and uncertain. Lashing out is their defensive mechanism and a cry for help. It’s likely the person is acting this way with others, too, not just you.
If you look past the person’s accusatory messages and view them as a person who is afraid of being discovered and needs help, how can you respond or handle in a way that keeps you from drowning with them but also may help them? That’s the view I suggest you work through in your self-talk.
I also realized when I have a moment or situations which trigger me, I practice my self-talk every morning even if the event hasn’t occurred. I train myself to think in the way I want so when the moment occurs I’m trained to answer in a better way.
My self-talk includes –
- Pausing in the moment
- Distancing from any sense of emotion
- Looking objectively at what occurred or what was said (if it happened in the past, I run it through my mind)
- Ask myself, who is actually harmed if I respond in anger or frustration, knowing the answer is me and it’s not healthy
- Decide to respond differently, here is where I shift my paradigm and look at the person or situation through a different lens – the drowning person example
- Given a new perspective, what is the best response for my own mental health and which may be helpful to the other person
- Less is best
- Don’t try to explain or argue points, they don’t want to know your view nor will they accept it so don’t try
- Respond from your own perspective – “this is how I chose to do that work or write that information”
- Acknowledge to them they now have the power to decided – “now that you own this, you can chose to handle in whatever way you think is best”
- Further negative responses from the person which are just criticisms should be ignored both physically and emotionally since they are just trying to protect themselves, it’s not really about you!
As I mentioned I practice my self-talk every day on any topic where I’m working to shift my thinking, even if it hasn’t occurred again. Training my brain is the intent.