The Premise:
We can learn through practice and persistence to control our emotions.
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The motivation or reason for this goal:
We encounter many difficult situations and or difficult people in life and our behavior can be reactive and counterproductive, or we can learn and practice being reasoned and productive behavior instead.
The methodology
This entails changing the way we view difficult people or difficult situations.
Many difficult people we encounter are angry or displaying some other negative emotion and dumping this emotional garbage onto us. We receive it and it changes our emotional state to the negative one they are carrying around. We can react to their behavior by fighting fire with fire and respond to meanness with meanness, thus allowing this person to change and control our emotional state.
This is what happens when our behavior is reactive and counterproductive, or we can learn and practice being reasoned and productive behavior instead. Which means we continue to do what we always have, and reap the reward we always reap, which is allowing someone to ruin our mood or perhaps our day. Or we can choose to practice something different, so we can get a different outcome.
We can choose to respond to meanness and rudeness with empathy. Empathy is when you allow yourself to see from another’s perspective and understand their plight. We can choose to instead of being mean back to the person who is mean to us, to empathize and think to ourselves, this person is having a real bad day for reasons I don’t know. Instead of escalating the situation by meeting anger with more anger, I will assume they have something bad going and respond in an empathic manner.
This doesn’t meet fire with fire, it meets fire with a dirt wall. We neither add or subtract energy, we don’t interact and just walk away mentally and when possible and practical walk away physically.
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Conclusion
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Because I chose empathy, I have not added energy to their anger, nor have I attempted to reduce their anger, I have merely deflected it back at them.
Because I chose empathy over anger, I am not angry.
Because I chose empathy over anger my day is not ruined.
Because I chose empathy I can continue to focus on my tasks and goals and not be distracted.
Because I didn’t do what most people always do, I can achieve a different result.
-✍🏼 by Shortsegments.#
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