Tiny Buddha

Tag: reaction

  • How to Better Manage Stress So Little Things Don’t Set You Off

    How to Better Manage Stress So Little Things Don’t Set You Off

    “It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it.” ~Hans Selye

    I was driving home from work, minding my own business, when a car cut in front of me.

    Pretty common in Sydney traffic, right? Normally, I would just brush it off.

    But not today. For some reason I couldn’t explain, that simple event set me off. I got so irritated that I pressed both my hands on the horn and started shouting at the other driver—who just gave me the finger and continued on his merry way.

    That’s when I lost it. How dare he do something like this?

    I was determined to get even. To teach him a lesson.

    I was so immersed in rage that I almost caused an accident just to prove a point.

    Not my proudest moment, I know.

    Have you ever been through something like this? Something trivial suddenly escalating to a new level of crazy?

    Well, the other day I witnessed my neighbor screaming from his balcony at a dude passing by, just because he had gangster rap blasting out of a speaker. Okay, I can understand that you don’t agree with his musical preferences, but is this a reason to pick a fight with a stranger?

    Or, one Christmas Eve at a crowded parking lot of the local supermarket, I had a lady lash out at me for touching her car door with mine, when I was trying to hop in while holding a couple of grocery bags. I had to use all my self-control not to jump down her throat.

    I guess this sort of things happen to all of us. You know, you lose your cool and end up shouting at your kids in the food court of the shopping center. Or, you snap at your partner for loading the dishwasher the “wrong way.”

    It is as if we all have a Mr. Hyde waiting to come out.

    But why does this happen? And most importantly, how can we control the impulse to kill someone?

    The thing is that the “event” in itself is never the root cause of a rage fit. It is just the last drop on a very full cup.

    For instance, the day of my road rage episode, I was going home from a day that didn’t go as planned. While driving, I was ruminating on the things that didn’t work and I was already on edge.

    So, when the other driver cut me off, it just unleashed something that was already in the making. And if it wasn’t this event, it would have been something else.

    I was simply stressed out and unable to be my best self.

    And you know what? All of us are continually exposed to stressors. From our worries and anxieties, relationship conflicts, existential crises, and poor lifestyle choices to background noises, overstimulation, and information overload.

    Which means that our cups are constantly full. And if we don’t deal with it, we’ll always be one drop away from overflow.

    But is it realistic to think that you can completely eliminate stress from your life?

    Heck no. This type of expectation would only create more stress. You’d be stressing about not getting stressed.

    So what can we actually do to live better?

    Well, you have two options: you can empty your cup on regular basis, or you can upgrade your cup size (if you work on both, even better).

    Emptying your cup is what is known as stress-relief strategies. Those are the things you do on regular basis to blow off steam, like going for a jog or taking a bubble bath.

    These activities help you take your mind off your problems, creating space for your body to calm down. During this time, your body shifts from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest” mode, which is necessary to replenish your energy and recover from stress.

    But the key word here is REGULAR.

    Because these strategies are not likely to work when you are already bursting at the seams (you know what I mean if you ever tried meditating when you had a lot in your mind).

    Nope. They need to be part of your daily self-care routine. My suggestion is to create the habit of blocking off space in your calendar for a little “me time.”

    I know what you’re thinking. “Are you kidding? I don’t have time for that.”

    Seriously, self-care is not a luxury. It is a necessity. For your sanity, and the safety of others around you.

    Now, there will be times in which you may not be able to relax even after a whole hour of deep tissue massage. Those are the times you get restless, lose sleep, and can’t function properly. That’s why you need to build a bigger cup (or a bucket) so that you’re better able to tolerate potential stressors.

    Upgrading your cup simply means investing time in building mindset skills. Skills to help you manage stress, deal better with adversity, and become a problem solver. As a result, you’ll be able to take more on without going cuckoo.

    It’s like developing a superpower.

    How? Here’s a little framework that can help you respond more wisely to stressful situations and minimize unnecessary stress.

    1. Becoming aware

    Awareness means noticing (without judgment) what is going on in your mind and body. It’s learning to identify emotions and feelings, thought patterns, and responses (how you react when something happens).

    This way you’ll be able to discover what sets you off and put a stop on knee-jerk reactions that you may have on autopilot.

    For instance, noticing that you get irritated when you feel disrespected, which leads to an acid remark from your part. Awareness gives you the opportunity to pause and choose a better way to respond.

    2. Practicing mental hygiene

    Mental hygiene means going through our mental rules and deciding on what is useful and what only causes us stress.

    The mind creates mental rules based on array of past experiences. The thing is that these mental rules end up defining how you’ll respond to an event in the future. That’s how we get stuck in vicious cycles.

    We create rules about how things “should” be done, how people “should” act, how they “should” respond in certain situations, how the world “should” work… With so many ideas of how things should be, we end up living in defense mode, constantly fighting against everything our mind judges as “wrong.”

    To move on, you’ll need to learn to let go.

    For example, I made a rule in my head that said that things needed to be neat all the time after growing up with a neat father. This was totally fine while I lived on my own. But when I moved in with my partner, it became a constant source of attrition. My Mr. Hyde often came out when my partner’s behaviors went against my internal rules. So, I decided to let go of this rule in order to have a peaceful home life.

    3. Rewriting the rules

    The truth is that all beliefs serve a purpose. They are the code of conduct that guides our behaviors. So when we decide to get rid of a rule, we need to make sure that the unconscious need behind is being met in another way.

    For instance, to be able to let go of the rule I mentioned above, I had to ask myself why it was so important to have things organized. With a little bit of soul searching, I came to realize that when my environment was neat and orderly, I could process thoughts and emotions more efficiently, which meant that I felt more in control of my life. This helped me put things into perspective and develop new guidelines.

    Now, I allow myself to make things neat, but I don’t obsess about it anymore. That means that I don’t get upset when my husband leaves a dirty sock here and there. I just remind myself that having a peaceful environment is more important. And I developed other ways to feel in control of my mind and body like adopting a meditation practice and building an exercise routine.

    So now I ask you, how full is your cup? And most importantly, what can you do to prevent spillage?

    If this’s all very new to you, you could start by creating a self-care routine that helps you empty your cup on regular basis. And if you already have one, then work on upgrading your cup. This way you’ll be less likely to explode over little things.

    Oh, and don’t get put off if you have slip-ups. Keep in mind that stress management is a skill that gets better (and easier) with practice.

  • What Your Anger Is Trying to Tell You and How to Hear It

    What Your Anger Is Trying to Tell You and How to Hear It

    “When we embrace anger and take good care of our anger, we obtain relief. We can look deeply into it and gain many insights.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    It just took a few words from my husband before I felt my body move from calm to a boiling cauldron of rage. My whole being was alight, in flames. Energy felt like it was moving through me and shattering everything inside me.

    I hated it. Anger is so intense, and so big, that most of us can’t bear to feel it in our bodies.

    I wanted to do a lot of things—shout at him, throw things, scream the house down, offer rageful thoughts to anyone who would listen.

    I wanted this anger out of my body. NOW.

    In the past I have reacted to these inner sensations and launched arguments that could last hours or even days. I would rarely get anything other than anger back from my husband, and a continuous wrangling over who was wrong and why.

    It was painful and corroding to our relationship, feeling like a bomb would go off and we would spend days dealing with the damage.

    Until I learned that the source of my anger wasn’t my husband. Or my kids, or that person on Facebook, or politicians or corrupt business people.

    The source of my anger wasn’t outside of me, but within. And it was situations that were activating this anger. Until I learned how to deal with the anger, it would keep coming up over and over again, in ways that felt too overwhelming and painful for me.

    I was suppressing anger most of the time because I didn’t feel safe letting it out, but when it did come out it felt too strong and too damaging. It felt repulsive, overwhelming, dominating.

    Boiling rage. Painful flames of righteous anger tearing through my body. A sensation that the anger was smashing bits inside me.

    Anger is a hard emotion for most of us to feel. It’s got so much energy, so much force, so much intensity to it. And as an emotion, if we express anger, we usually get the most negative response back.

    Anger is frightening. It’s unbearable to hear, it sends shivers through us if we walk past someone angry and fuming.

    But when we suppress anger, when we don’t allow it to come up it gets trapped in our bodies, the energy of it creating havoc inside. For me it felt like it was trapped in my jaw, which was so often sore from clenching and squeezing my muscles.

    I didn’t want to feel overwhelmed by anger anymore. I wanted to be a woman who could be with it, feel it, and not explode or fall apart or trap its tension in my body.

    I started to become intimate and friendly with my anger. I started to recognize when it was coming up in my body—in small doses sometimes, activating minor annoyances in my life.

    “Oh, anger! There you are, I see you lurking there in the shadows.”

    And the times when I would feel a huge surge of it in my body, when my kids would say something, or I’d receive an unpleasant email or read something on Facebook.

    “Oh, lots of anger here now! Okay, I see your anger. You’re here, I understand.”

    And by noticing when it came up inside of me, I began to see how often it was a thread in my life. And by noticing it I started, in a small way, to provide some relief for myself.

    The thing that I would then do, which made such a beautiful and healing difference, especially when huge surges of anger came my way—like when my husband said that thing and I wanted to shout shout shout at him—is to give myself time, space, love and support

    I stay with myself and don’t react externally.

    I don’t blame what I see as the source of my anger, but really isn’t.

    I tend to myself with a loving touch of my heart. (When touch on the body lasts over twenty seconds it releases oxytocin, the love hormone.)

    I give myself loving words—Di, I see this anger is really painful. It’s so big, so overwhelming.

    I ask myself, where is this in my body, how is it feeling?

    All of this attention on myself, at my reactions and how I am feeling, gives my body the signal that I am being deeply and lovingly cared for. I am safe to feel this feeling.

    I might do some relaxing breathing, giving a short inhale, followed by a long exhale which activates the rest-and-relax mode.

    I stay with myself as long as the emotion is there. “I’ve got you, Di! I can be with you through this feeling. I love you, Di.”

    And if I need to move and do something to help the energy pass through me, I do. I go for a walk, smash some rocks, squeeze or punch a pillow.

    Why this is so very important, why this makes so much of a difference in how we handle our emotions, is that it gives us the chance to let the energy of the emotion pass through. And when we do this repeatedly, we teach our system that emotions like anger are safe to be experienced, that we can hold and support ourselves through what life brings us.

    It also doesn’t make the situation worse by exploding at the person who may or may not have said or done something you didn’t like.

    If this is a situation that needs to be sorted out, if what was said or done needs discussion, it is infinitely more effective to wait for your anger to move through you until you are out the other side, than to talk to someone when you are in a rage.

    That’s because you are highly likely to activate their anger, as anger in others can feel like an attack on ourselves.

    And when we are deeply emotional, we can’t truly hear and empathize with other people, so we are just giving a speech, which the other person can’t hear if they’re also emotional!

    We risk escalating the situation further by saying and doing things we deeply regret. And, of course, we can also put ourselves in danger.

    If we want to be truly heard by someone, and if we want to create change, we have to wait until the emotion has passed. Then we have the best possible chance of coming to a positive agreement with someone else about what we didn’t like or want.

    Anger, like all emotions, can give us a unique understanding of what needs we have that aren’t being met. When we see the roots of what has activated the anger, we can see that there are often unmet needs to explore.

    For me, after that big rageful explosion, after I moved through the flames of anger and out the other side, I saw that I wanted more private space for myself to work uninterrupted so I could fully concentrate.

    It was a need I had been thinking about on and off for a while, but that I hadn’t really realized that it was upsetting me. It gave me the sense that I was last on the priority list as everyone else in the family had a space for private time.

    And so seeing that, I could then work on meeting that need, and reducing the chances of anger being activated around that subject again.

    Anger, what are you trying to tell me? I asked, and it told me.

  • Understanding Is Love (and the World Needs More Love)

    Understanding Is Love (and the World Needs More Love)

    “Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand you can’t love.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I recently attended a weekend workshop, and there was a man in the group who always had a strange look on his face whenever we had to look for a partner to work with. I noticed that some people avoided him, like they didn’t want to work with him. Perhaps it was the vibe he gave off because of the way he looked at people.

    At some point later in the weekend I sat with him. It was hard to put my finger on it, but there was something about him that did feel a little strange, and I could see that other people were put off by him.

    After the weekend had finished, we happened to be sitting next to each other and started talking, which somehow led to him telling me that he is almost completely blind. With his contact lenses in he can see okay, but the low light of the room made it very hard for him to make out faces.

    In that moment I understood. That was why he gave off a weird vibe—because he was having trouble seeing. The “look” he gave was simply a result of him trying to see and ultimately connect with someone.

    The internal label I’d given him of “strange” dissolved in an instant, and in that same moment I felt an opening in my heart. It was an unconditional level of understanding that brought with it a sense of peace and connection.

    Understanding and Letting Go

    We often get frustrated or angry with the people around us, projecting our emotions and frustrations onto them when we don’t understand them. The moment we understand, it can change our whole attitude, creating a space of opening.

    Imagine you’re driving your car, and the car in front of you starts slowing down. You don’t know why they’re slowing down, so you get frustrated and possibly impatient. Maybe you start verbalizing your frustration, or perhaps you even honk your horn in an effort to release some of your tension.

    Then you see an elderly woman crossing the road, moving very slowly.

    In that moment your frustration softens, because you now understand why the driver in front of you was slowing down. They saw something you didn’t.

    We can take understanding in this example even further. You also understand the woman moving slowly. Perhaps you have a mother or grandmother who moves slowly, or you realize that one day, as you age, this could be you, and you’d appreciate drivers slowing down for you. Or maybe you’re young but injured.

    Understanding creates a mental shift enabling us to replace reactive emotions and disconnection with compassion and connection.

    Understanding Is a State of Mind

    Understanding is more than something we do, as in trying to understand someone else’s perspective or how they feel. Yes, this is part of it, but understanding is also a state of mind that we can cultivate. Just like joy, enthusiasm, sadness, or frustration are states of mind that govern the way we experience life.

    When we feel joyous, we think, act, and respond to life in a certain way—joyfully. When we feel frustrated, we think, act, and react to life in a different way—finding reasons to justify our frustration everywhere.

    Understanding is a state of mind that makes us feel more peaceful, compassionate, and connected, creating an attitude of “us” as opposed to a “me vs. you” mentality.

    When we proactively nurture an understanding mindset, we approach people with openness—even if they’re difficult—because we’re committed to always looking beneath the surface instead of making judgments and assumptions.

    We may not always know why someone acts the way they do. But an attitude of understanding does not actually require us to know the exact details of other people’s story.

    Understanding at its deepest level is just like love—an unconditional understanding of another’s humanness. We don’t have to know their story, but we can appreciate they’re going through the human experience, just like us.

    Cultivating an Attitude of Understanding

    There are various ways to cultivate understanding in your life, but I’d love to share a reflective exercise here to help you understand and connect more deeply to yourself and humanity.

    Think of a time when you lost it. A situation when you got angry or frustrated. Maybe a family member did something that really upset you, or maybe someone undermined you at work. The reason why does not matter here; you’re not trying to justify it, and you’re definitely not judging it as right or wrong.

    When you have that memory in mind, just feel it. Feel the sensations in your body—the intensity, the heat, or the thoughts and emotions that come with it. If it’s uncomfortable, that’s okay.

    Don’t try and change it. Just feel it.

    As you feel it, notice that in that moment you were unable to maintain peace inside yourself.

    We can’t be at peace inside while reacting with anger.

    I’m not suggesting there should be a suppression of anger in any way. This is about recognizing the truth of what’s happening inside us when we react with anger. When it happens unconsciously there’s nothing we can do about it—the result being we act mindlessly. But when we consciously pay attention, we deepen our self-awareness, and this gives us the opportunity to choose how we act.

    I had an experience at a coffee shop where I was returning my drink because they’d made the wrong one. When I told the woman at the cashier they’d made the wrong order she was quite rude, and told me bluntly, “That’s what you ordered!”

    It caught me by surprise. Her attitude made me feel like I was being accused of something I didn’t do. I could feel myself getting angry and ready to defend myself.

    I felt a wave of intensity come up inside me.

    As I was about to react and get into an argument with her, there was a moment where instead of feeling my anger, I could feel she was stressed. Something was bothering her, even before our interaction. I don’t know what it was, but it was enough for me to pause, reflect, and understand that we often don’t know what’s causing someone to act the way they do. We can never know what’s happened in their lives just before we began interacting with them.

    There are so many different reasons why someone might be stressed or upset—an argument or breakup, chronic back pain, the death of a loved one, or inability to pay their mortgage to name a few possible explanations.

    That moment of understanding her human nature allowed me to let go of my reaction. I’d taken her reaction personally, and it put me in a state of “you vs. me” where I was ready to fight to defend myself. And I would have felt quite justified in doing so because I felt falsely accused. But if I had, it would’ve just been me reacting to her reaction, and we likely would have ended up in an argument.

    Reaction versus reaction = conflict.

    The world is already so full of conflict. If we want to create more peace in the world, we have to choose not to take things personally and instead respond with understanding, compassion, connection, and peace.

    I’m not suggesting it’s easy, but I believe moments like these offer an opportunity to live from our heart when a natural reaction is conflict.

    For me, in this case, the shift to understanding opened my heart and created a sense of peace and connection to the woman.

    She must have felt it on some level, because without me pushing back at her with my own reaction, she also softened. Something dropped, and she simply asked the barista to make me a new beverage.

    Whatever was bothering her before was still there, but I could feel she wasn’t projecting it outward onto me.

    A moment of understanding can change everything.

    The World Needs More Love (Understanding)

    We often judge or complain about other people’s actions, but if we can pause and be honest with ourselves, we’ll realize we often do something of a similar nature ourselves.

    Everyone has different life stories and traumas that condition their unique personality, but we all experience moments when we’re unable to maintain peace inside, so even though we may not know someone’s exact story, we’re still capable of understanding.

    Instead of wasting our energy judging or complaining about others, we can put ourselves in their shoes and understand that we struggle with similar emotional challenges. This allows us to be more present and compassionate, cultivate deeper self-awareness, and connect on a human level.

    Imagine a world where more people chose understanding and truth rather than reaction and conflict.

    But ultimately imagining it is not enough; it’s a good start, but we need to act. We need to live and engage life from our heart.

    “Understanding is love’s other name…”

    “Understanding is an avenue into love. It’s also an expression of love in action. When we enter into understanding we are entering into love… and “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~Jimi Hendrix

    What kind of a world do you want to live in?

    Will you choose understanding instead of reaction today?

  • How To Respond When Someone Takes Advantage of You

    How To Respond When Someone Takes Advantage of You

    Sad Woman

    “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou

    Several months ago, I moved into a new house. During the inspection of my old house, I was expecting to receive my whole security deposit back.

    I didn’t. The landlady took advantage of the situation and withheld part of my deposit.

    She charged me the price of cleaning the whole house even though I was only renting a room in the house. And she charged for me something that was already damaged when I moved in, falsely claiming that I was the one who damaged the item.

    There really wasn’t much I could do. The amount of money she was keeping wasn’t enough to make legal action worthwhile. Nor, obviously, could I force her to give me the money.

    What made the situation even worse is that I had repeatedly gone out of my way to help the landlady. Whenever she asked me for a simple favor, I did my best to oblige.

    The truth is that I considered her a friend. Yet in the end, all she cared about was money.

    Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a calm, easy-going person. It takes a lot to get me upset.

    This got me upset. I ranted. I raved. I yelled. All to no avail.

    I was completely powerless to change the situation, which is probably what caused me to react the way I did.

    I’m not proud of how I acted in this situation. I obviously felt quite frustrated and my feeling of powerlessness fueled my anger.

    At the same time, I know that I could have handled the situation better, that I could have behaved in a more mature way.

    Since this happened several months ago, I’ve had plenty of time and emotional distance to think through what I could have done differently.

    When possible, prepare ahead of time for the worst.

    I was caught off guard. Before the meeting with my ex-landlady, I never considered the possibility that she might withhold part of my deposit.

    If I had a do-over, I would have mentally prepared myself ahead of time for this possibility. The benefit of preparing for the worst is that I would have overestimated the amount she might withhold.

    I still would have been upset about not getting my full deposit back, but much less so.

    Advocate for yourself without losing control.

    Even if you’re in a situation in which the other person has control, you can still advocate for your position. You can try to get the other person to see your point of view and perhaps negotiate an agreement.

    Losing control, however, doesn’t allow the other person to hear our point of view and rarely gets us what we want.

    Instead, losing control can cause situations to degenerate quickly and can lead us to act in ways that we later regret.

    If you calmly advocate for yourself, there’s no guarantee you’ll get your way. But losing control does guarantee that you won’t get what you want.

    Take the higher road and preserve your integrity.

    If the other person has complete or almost complete power over the situation and they refuse to compromise or negotiate, you’re probably best off taking the higher road and preserving your integrity.

    Be the bigger person. Just because someone else chooses to act without integrity, that doesn’t mean that we have to follow them.

    My yelling and ranting and raving accomplished nothing, except to make myself look foolish. And to lower my opinion of myself.

    I don’t want to be the type of person who yells and rants and raves. I want to be the type of person who can assert my position calmly. That’s where my integrity is.

    Acknowledge your own imperfections.

    The truth is that I’m far from perfect.

    Have I ever engaged in similar behavior, being less than honest with someone else, taking advantage of someone else? The answer is yes.

    In Byron Katie’s The Work, she asks us to do “turnarounds” in which we look inward at our own behavior rather than focus outward on other people’s behavior.

    When I did this, I was able to generate a list of times when I’ve taken advantage of other people, just like my ex-landlady took advantage of me.

    If we want others to be honest in their dealings with us, we need to start by changing our own behavior first. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

    Forgive the other person.

    You don’t have to like the other person’s behavior. But you can still forgive them for the choices they’ve made.

    Forgiveness isn’t about the other person; forgiveness is about maintaining our own peace of mind. Forgiveness allows us to let go of anger and return to a state of peace.

    On the other hand, holding onto anger gains us nothing, causes us more pain, and keeps us stuck in the path.

    Get help or eliminate the person from your life.

    In my situation, there was no need to have ongoing contact with the woman who took advantage of me.

    But that’s not always the case. You might be in a situation where someone who is a regular part of your life is taking advantage of you.

    If you are, then you need to take a good hard look at the situation and decide how you want to handle it.

    You might choose to eliminate the person from your life if they’re unwilling to accept responsibility and change their behavior.

    If you can’t eliminate the person from your life, then another option is to elicit help or support from someone else. Someone who has more power to change the situation then what you have.

    —

    Chances are, at some point in your life, you’ve been taken advantage of by someone you trusted. And you felt powerless to do anything about it.

    In the end, we can’t control others’ behavior, but we can control our own. We do have power over our own choices.

    We might feel helpless in these situations, but the reality is that we’re anything but helpless. The next time you’re in a situation where someone is taking advantage of you, I encourage you to take a pause and mindfully decide how you want to handle the situation.

    Sad woman image via Shutterstock

  • On Catching Thoughts Before They Become Emotional Reactions

    On Catching Thoughts Before They Become Emotional Reactions

    Emotions

    “I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.” ~Carl Jung

    Recently I experienced a big shock, the kind that most of us don’t encounter very often.

    I was with a friend when I discovered evidence of a physical disaster near my home. I did not, at that time, know any of the details, nor did I know what kind of impact it might have on my own life.

    Now, normally, I am a person who likes, even needs, to process my emotional impact verbally. In other words, I really like to talk things out. (What else would you expect from a professional therapist, right?)

    But in this circumstance, I found myself unwilling to talk about my inner workings at all. My friend who was with me was even a little frustrated. She couldn’t understand why I shut down. I didn’t even know, myself.

    So What Happened? (more…)