It might be age. It might be because of spring. It might be for no reason really. Or there might be a cause. Whatever.
Lately, it seems that I have been into a sprituality mood or something. I bought a few books on Yoga but not just the moves... actually not about the moves much... they are more about the spiritual aspect of it all. Yoga moves, per all these books, are really tools to help you progress on a personal level and learn about yourself and all that good stuff. The goal is not to be the best at doing all the poses but rather the best person that you can be. Very interesting, right? I certainly think so.
I like reading those books. But I read them slowly. I want to digest the information. I like to read a chapter and think about it and write my thoughts and what I thought was striking about what I read.
Well, there have been some changes in me... welcomed changes, if I may say so. I feel like I have improved and progressed quite a bit on a personal level over quite a number of years, actually. One thing that I have always struggled with and have not been able to affect much is my lack of patience. I am very patient at work... but I think that patience is like a pool... you start the day with so much patience and once the pool is dry, well, duck! And, unfortunately, it seems that my patience runs out for my activities outside of work (and that means that my poor hubby takes the brunt of it).
So far, nothing had worked. Well, along with the yoga and the readings, I have done some meditation. All these things center me and make me feel more peaceful. The first result was simple: more peaceful = more patience.
I was finally getting somewhere. There has been a situation at work that has helped... in a weird way. I have a coworker who annoys me recently. I think that that person is loud, has a hard time handling stress, and sighs as if it's the end of the world at least once per hour. It gets on my nerves. About 2 weeks ago, I had a dream about work and that person and it was a relatively bad dream.
When I woke up, my first reaction was to think that that was weird but I often believe that there is a reason why you remember certain dreams. Some of them are just inspiration/creativity dreams but others are a message from your subconsious. Well, I realized that I had not accepted or was reluctant to accept that the situation annoyed me so much that I was dreading going to work every day (and worse on Mondays, though) whereas I normally am perfectly fine with going to work because I just plain love my work. So that was a revelation. And then I actually had to tell myself that I had to face the fact that the reason why I dread going to work was because of my annoyance at my coworker. Somehow it was hard to swallow. Maybe because I usually like everybody and my annoyance was so bad that it was almost at the "dislike" point.
Anyway, I did some more thinking. What could I do to help with my annoyance? Well, I could talk to that person but it's a touchy situation and, really, that person has reasons to be stressed out so that person needs to express the stress. And then I realized that, obviously, I could affect the way that I feel about it. I shouldn't be annoyed. I should just let it go. Right around the time when I reached that conclusion, the coworker let out a big, huge sigh and I let it go. Know what? I don't notice that person's annoying behavior as much if at all.
Since that day, I try to apply that to everything. I am not always successful. Like today I was searching for gift certificates for my massage therapist (it was a deal of you buy 2 massages, you get the third free so you have like gift certificates to present to redeem your paid massages) and I couldn't find them. I was pretty sure that they should be at a certain place but they were not and I looked everywhere that I could think of and couldn't find them still. So, I was majorly annoyed, even angry, at potentially (probably) having lost them. So I didn't succeed in not being annoyed by that. It was time for me to leave for work so I went to grab my purse. My poor hubby was asking me what I was going to do. Interestingly, instead of giving back a harsh reply, which would have been my usual reaction, I just said that there was only one thing that I could do: go to the massage, explain to the therapist that I have lost the certificates, see if she will let me redeem the massage anyway, if not, I will pay for the massage. Plain and simple.
So, bottom line, I work really at not letting stuff annoy me and it seems to be improving. And what's best is that it obviously makes MY life easier because I don't spend energy on being upset over things when, really, that is wasted energy. Whenever I still get upset, I remind myself that that could be energy better spent elsewhere. And it's like the first time that I actually feel progress on that front! Woohoo! ;o)
Comments I had received
From Parvaneh:
Kudos to you Celeste! We cannot control other people's behavior. All we can control is our reaction to them. I think you have hit on a very important point there about the expenditure of energy. It, too, is a pool that can be depleted. Keep up the good work!!
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