After a decidedly difficult and disturbing Monday to start my week, I woke this morning to feeling a little lighter. I know everyone goes through emotions, and everyone handles them as they can. Sometimes we do not handle them the best way we can. Instead of responding to emotions, we instantly react.
We live in a world of instant gratifications, and instant emotions. We no longer stop to think before we speak, or express ourselves. Even though so much of our world is about being "politically correct," we tend to react or overreact in an instant. Whether we are happy, upset, hurting, or in desperation. We tend to jump off the cliff of emotions without thought. When someone upsets us or makes us angry, we are quick to jump off the cliff of being angry, hurt, or placing guilt; before truly understanding or listening to the meaning of what the other person has said or physically done. I have been horrible guilty of this. I react rather than respond. I jump to instant anger rather than trying to understand. My blood goes to instant boil mode, and I am pissed...and for a long while, too. I am not one that can just let anything go. I tend to get angry, then sit and stew about it until I feel the situation has been leveled off. When in reality, if I would have taken even just a few minutes to try to understand the situation, I could have responded rather than reacted.
Yesterday for me, was a day of reactions, not responses. I was angry the entire day. When I finally took a few minutes to gather my thoughts, and quick reacting; the situations of the day had already gotten out of control. After a few minutes of thinking, and yes, even a few minutes of slamming stuff around, I felt more in control of my thoughts and was ready to respond. By then there was already so much chaos that could have been prevented, I had to do some damage control. It's never a situation that causes an issue, per se, it's how we react or respond. I have handle many situations poorly by reacting, rather than responding. However, I am trying to become more aware and attuned, so that a response becomes quicker than a reaction. It's not always easy, as anyone with a bad temper will tell you!
How do you handle situations when they arise for you? Most of the time for me, I react and then take the time to understand and then try to repair the chaos with response. I know that is ass backwards! Sometimes I think this process is human nature, but other times, I think it is just a bad excuse for bad tempers! I have always despised people using excuses not to do or change something. However, I have done the exact same thing! I have had a bad temper for years, and had taken great steps to keep it in check, until the last couple of years. The last couple of years, it has become more difficult to keep it in check, and a lot easier to just react.
I don't like not having control over myself, let alone different situations. It keeps me in a constant state of chaos. I have spent years, learning to control my temper, my reactions, and even my conversations; keeping them in a neat and tidy little box that no one had the privileged of knowing about. My deepest thoughts, my feelings/emotions, my insecurities, and yes, even my achievements were locked away. I was proud of myself, but it was easier to lock away the achievement than to deal with those who didn't show the same level of excitement those achievements brought to me. As with all my emotions/feelings, have been tamped down to keep any disappointments to a minimum. So, I take all those emotions wrap them up tight, and but them in the proverbial box of stuff that I keep within the solid walls I have built around myself.
The last couple of years, though, it seems that tidy little box has become so full, it's trying to overflow. I have made plenty of mistakes, no...that's not right. I have plenty of life lessons. I have seen so much good, my share of bad, and seen so much disloyalty. I have allowed too many people to treat me disrespectfully, I have been disrespectful, and I have taken a shit-ton of issues on my own shoulders that should not have ever been put there. I have dealt with life changing issues(from a very young age), watched loved ones become ill and pass on without properly grieving. I have allowed family to treat me as though I do not matter, and cause too much interference in my life. I have allowed friendships to falter over irrelevant issues, and walked away from friendships that were causing too many issues. I have held onto resentments that probably should have been let go of, and let of issues that I should have taken a closer look at.
Even with some major issues, I am still learning about, I have done some pretty remarkable things. I get to be a full-time Mom. Even on days when the kids are a little overwhelming, I know how amazing that is. I can say without the shadow of doubt, I know my kids better than anyone else on this planet! I get to teach my kids. While this has caused some major ruckus, it has been such an amazingly inspirational journey so far. It has been the best journey I could have ever taken. I got a degree at 23 years old, and paid for it myself, while working. I got a certificate with honors in Natural Health Consulting, while taking care of an 8 year old and a new born. I beat cancer! I donate, every year, to a local good will group and one in my hometown, to allow other children to have Christmas gifts...even if it means cutting back on my own family Christmas. I have found the differences between religion and spirituality, without losing faith in a higher power. I have grown my knowledge in cooking/baking, growing/raising my own food, and preserving that food. I have gained tremendous wisdom from my husbands family about the ways love plays into everything we do for our families. I have gained enormous insight to life, where I live, from my husband. Even though I know he must get frustrated with me when I don't know what he's talking about, or ask a million questions...a million times about something he's already tried to explain!
Last night, I got about 6 hours of sleep. I normally have one of two kinds of sleep...1.)very light, where I hear every noise or 2.) very hard, where I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. Last night, however, I had what I can only describe as an insightful rest. I woke up rested, but full of sight and feeling a whole lot lighter than I have for a long time. I don't remember dreaming much, but I woke up with a fresh thought process to dealing with some issues that have been irritating me. I felt like, even though the issues are going to be there, I could handle them and even knew a few ideas that could work. I have even began a couple of them this morning, already. I knew my reactions to a few situations yesterday were horrible, but I reacted the whole day. It wasn't until I took some time; even slammed a few things around, and took a few deep breaths that I felt a little more in control and could respond. It took until almost 1 this morning to get the reactions to the situations drawn away from chaos, and allow everything to calm down again, enough for me to be able to sleep.
I know we are all a work in progress, and we do what we think is right. Even though we may take the hardest path possible, we need to become more aware of our reactions, and turn them into responses. So many believe that chose the path we are on in life, long before we ever got here. If that is the case, we are meant to learn from our situations to allow our soul to evolve. By always reacting, we are not learning. It's only when we turn those would be reactions into insightful and meaningful responses that can actually learn. Whether we believe in this theory or not, the overall lesson is the same. We must quit reacting to situations and take the time to process, and understand them; then respond to them. If we never learn how to change situations, they will just reoccur until we are willing to process, understand, learn and then change them.
Each of us are on a remarkable journey during our short time on this Earth. When we allow situations to rule that journey, we are not living up to our potential and those situations are stealing the very happiness and peace we all strive to have. Don't waste another second, using reactions as an excuse. Respond to whatever situation you are dealing with, and move on in happiness and peace. Don't get swept away with all drama that reacting causes. Take the time to learn what the situations are trying to teach you. Take the time to understand it, and then formulate a plan to fix it. Only when you are making an educated, informed response will the situations begin to disappear and in turn, you will find your happiness and peace.
Peace,
~Salli~
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