Can you think back to a time when you were really annoyed? Pull it up and keep it in your mind. How did that affect your patience and your kindness towards others? Did you have more patience or less patience? Were you kinder or less kind? I’m guessing most of you circled less kind and less patient.
We all know our mood affects how we interact with the world. You’ve probably said (or at least heard), "sorry, it’s not you, I’m just in a terrible mood." Right? Your internal state is influencing the response you have to the environment.
So, who is in control of your internal state?
The slow check-out person, the driver blocking traffic, the weather, the news??
Uh-oh.
We like to blame it on the situation. But when we look at it in the cold light of day, we don’t feel so confident blaming the poor check-out person for our terrible mood. This is even more challenging to do with the people nearest and dearest to us. If they would just not talk that way, then you wouldn’t react that way. If they changed, everything would be fine. Right?? Wrong. Most of us know that.
There’s one person who controls your inner state. YOU. You might not know where the control knobs are. You might have spilled coffee over the user manual. But, truth be told, you know that your inner state is controlled by YOU.
You bring your emotional state with you into every moment. When you’re stressed, everything and everyone is bothering you. When you're joyful, everything and everyone is a gift. You can argue with us that we are oversimplifying this. And yes, we would agree this short letter does not give us the space to address some of the nuances here (brain chemistry, history, trauma, etc). But you don’t need nuance to GET the point.
To You!
Workability
August 10, 2021
workabilityinc