Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 334 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Nice to be with you as always, having a consistent, positive, short reminder twice a week is like having your own little mindset coach. Someone who reminds you it’s ok to have all these feelings and that there is nothing wrong with you for having them. But also reminds you that you are the one that controls those feelings by what you’re giving attention to. We were never really told that in school. What you think about and what you allow into your mind has everything to do with how you feel. And how you feel, has everything to do with what you do, what actions you take. So if you start the day mad at the world and you don’t get out ahead of it by managing those thoughts that got you there….then odds are it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. And we don’t want that.
There’s all sorts of reasons for a day to get off on the wrong foot. Maybe you didn’t get any sleep, your car won’t start. You have a fight with your spouse. Someone cuts you off in traffic. Whatever it is. That’s how your day started. We all have things come up that stink.
I posted this on my Instagram the other day but it was a guy saying did you really have a hard day or did you have a hard 5 minutes and you milked it all day? Lol. Oh man. I posted that I felt attacked. But we do that don’t we? Something happens and we allow it to wreck our whole day. Or we carry it with us the rest of the day.
There’s a snowball effect isn’t there? Where we start the morning spilling coffee on our shirt and it has us so flustered we seem to attract drivers who cut us off and waiters who are rude then we notice the coworkers who are just so lazy and of course it just keeps going so that by the end of the day we are drowning our sorrows in a few glasses of wine which in turn Carrie’s the problems on the next morning. All of that because the day started wrong.
So much energy spent warding off bad drivers and lazy coworkers.
Or maybe you started the day with a fight with your partner or your kids and rather than taking the time to work through it on your own, you just ruminated about it all day, having conversations with yourself about how next time you’re gonna say this or that and when I get home I’m not talking to any of them.
So much energy spent recreating the argument in your head and coming up with much better things you could have said to make your point.
This is the kind of drama that can happen every single day and we wonder why we are overwhelmed and it could have been a less than 1 minute interaction but now like my friend on instagram said “I’ve milked it for the whole day”. It’s tempting because it’s a bit easier to have someone else to blame for our day being bad than accepting the idea that we haven’t done the work to be able to handle the little annoying things that pop up.
People are going to do things that are annoying. But guess what? It’s not their job to not be annoying to you, it’s your job to not allow it to annoy you. Ugh, that’s maddening isn’t it? We so want it to be their fault for us being frustrated when they cut us off in traffic when there’s nothing wrong with letting them have the lane, you don’t know what’s happening in that car, they could be rushing to the hospital with their wife in labor in the backseat and don’t try to think you know, it doesn’t matter. What matters is your peace. Your energy. You’re being able to handle the bumps in the road without being all dramatic about it.
I’ve been there where life wasn’t going my way and so little things would just get under my skin so easily, you know what Im talking about. When you’re having an amazing day and you feel great, you feel like you look great, when someone rides up on your tail in traffic, you’re just like, Ok let me get out of your way and you move over into the other lane giving them the chance to pass. But if you’re grumpy and not managing your thoughts when they ride up on you, now you tap the brakes, or worse you give them a disapproving gesture. Either of those moves could REALLY end up bad, they could rear end you or they could pull out a gun, literally this happened in Memphis, a guy was driving on the interstate, someone cut him off in traffic and he gave them a gesture and they pulled out a gun and shot him through his car window, he managed to pull in to a gas station to get help and lived to see another day but now he has a shoulder wound to show for it. Now nothing makes violence ok ever but if he hadn’t of lost his cool and he just pulled out of the way, would that have happened? We’ll never know but my guess is no.
Wouldn’t it be better to head it off before it gets there? But we have to be aware of our thoughts in order to head them off.
Being easily annoyed is just a sign that there’s something else going on. There’s something bigger underneath that needs to be managed. Working on being aware of our thoughts is the number one thing that will help us manage that and meditation is hands down the best way to do it. But if you’re not ready for that, having a phrase ready in your back pocket for any time you get triggered can keep the bad 5 minutes from being a bad day or year in the case of the guy that got shot. My suggestion is this.
What if any time something annoys you you stopped for a minute and just said “Am I gonna let this ruin my day?” In sort of a good natured way.
The one thing we all know by now is there will be things that come up most days that could derail our day if we let it, our job is to not let it. So remember this episode, save it, send it to yourself in a text. Or at the very least write that phrase on a piece of paper and put it somewhere that you can see it easily. And the next time you get “triggered” the new it word…..You can ask yourself “Am I gonna let this ruin my day?” Of course you’re not. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
