How you deal with a situation will often result in it either being a positive experience or a negative one.
Do you ever realize after the fact that a situation was made much worse, or much better, by your own thoughts or reactions to it?
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it” – Eckhart Tolle
Sometimes all we need to do is decide we are going to make a conscious effort to stop and think before reacting in any situation. Often times our perception of what is happening is often not the reality, or full picture, and if we take a few moments to breath and think, the whole situation can become a completely different experience.
I have been extremely stressed this summer, feeling pulled in many directions, caring for my kids, my mom having a stroke and moving in with her (with my kids) and adding a new puppy to our family.
Most days lately, I lose my temper at some point, and often directed at the kids, but it is not solely for something they are doing or even something happening right at that moment. My reactions have not been thought out, or rational. Today I decided that I need to do a few things to avoid “losing it” and create more positive outcomes, and a happier household.
We often remind our children to curb their initial response with an emotional management technique, such as taking deep breaths, or counting to ten. We really should take our own advice in all our stressful or emotional experiences in life.
These are my strategies for keeping my cool in any situation, and creating a more positive environment.
- Breathe- Taking a moment to take a few deep breaths gives me the chance to become a little more calm. I will be trying to do this much more often including Deep Breathing daily.
- Think – Again, a few seconds to think about my reaction: how can I make this better? what caused this? is it worth the battle? can we move on?
- Acceptance – Accept what has happened, deal with underlying situation and move on. Holding a grudge is so easy, but causes stress that just makes other situations harder to deal with. You cannot change the past, but you can make better decisions in the future. Learn from bad or unhappy situations, but do not let them ruin you.
Here are a few articles I found with steps and tips to hep handle hard situations.
7 Ways to Get Past Tough Situations Quickly by Lori Deschene
5 Steps to Handling Emotionally Difficult Situations by D. Leslie Becker-Phelps
