Your child lies to you. Your partner takes out his aggravation caused by his stressful day on you. Your boss adds additional work to your work load while the rest of your team floats by and goes home early. The manager at the service center at the car dealership doesn’t call you back despite several messages and plea to please call back as soon as possible with an answer. Okay, the last one may be a personal example.
Are the feelings that you are experiencing justified? Sure.
Should you continue to feed them with lots of evidence that anyone would feel the same way? Well, it depends on your goal.
Our feelings are often “justified” but it doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. Let’s look at my personal example for a moment.
Data
I called the service center at the dealership two days last week to let them know that I was going to take my car to have a rust spot taken care of and to find out what the process will be because my warranty is going to cover the work that is done. This follows months of phone calls and lots of people telling me different things about whether or not this will be covered. Does it seem appropriate for me to be annoyed by the situation? To some people, sure.
I want to use this as an opportunity for growth. So, I think, why am I upset? How does this touch on my core trigger buttons?
First, I often feel as if I am the cause of things that go wrong. So that voice inside me says “you waited way too long to get this taken care of? They probably aren’t even going to cover it now and it’s your fault. Why do you procrastinate so much? You can’t afford to fix it if they won’t cover it. You messed up again. You need to get your act together and take care of these things? He’s not calling you back because he already told you the process. You should know this. See, there you go not paying attention. You looked like an idiot standing there telling the receptionist that you weren’t sure what the process would be for payment. The people at the dealership are probably so annoyed with you right now. They see you coming and cringe. You are being so needy.”
I am collecting evidence that I am the cause of things that go wrong. The feeling is causing me to be jittery, a heaviness in my chest and in my stomach. I NEED IT TO GO AWAY! So, I call the dealership again to find out the status because I just need it to go away.
I smile as I type this because now I know. Now I’m not caught up in being angry. I can breathe, send my breath and love to my chest and my stomach. I can tell myself “you are feeling anxious about this. You didn’t mess up. It’s okay. If you get a call back and they won’t cover it then you will move on. No work is being done until they get the okay. Worst case scenario is that you go pick up your car and the work doesn’t get done. It’s okay. You didn’t make it go wrong. You are just fine. You got this.”
Try to live your life as an experiment. “Huh? This feeling is interesting. What’s going on here?” and I promise, it will serve you well.
Good luck!
Lauren