Are you humane? Calm? Balanced? When faced with any type of interruption to your life, do you take a breath and pause before you speak or act? Can you summon a calm, neutral state and not add more boiling water to the stew pot of chaos?
If so, I’d like to get to know you. When I go to work, I’d like you as a customer. Anybody who works in customer service would like to have you as a customer, or outside of work you would make a decent acquaintance. Right now pleasant people can be hard to find, because tempers are short and it seems that decision making skills are lacking. Sure there is a lot of stress out there, and it will probably be there for a while, but our behavior is still under our control even if disease and difficulties are not.
This week seemed filled with nastiness from people who could have been more mature or restrained in their behaviors but chose not to. One that really stood out was irksome from the start, because the person began the interaction by making snarky remarks about what they perceived to be shortcomings. You know the type; they begin with a “you people” speech and launch into a list of grievances about how they feel wronged, followed by how everybody else caused the problem, ending with either an amazing expectation or a threat to go to the news media or somebody of authority to destroy the perceived wrong-doers’ lives.
They tend to craft a clever phrase or two about how “yeah, you really did a great job for me,” when they really feel you did nothing. Oftentimes everything the person needed to not have to go to all that trouble is accessible, because our society has made most things more easy to locate than before.
What it boiled down to was that all this person had to do was ask.
Imagine that! They could have saved the time, effort and bile involved in preparing such a heated argument by simply asking one question. That and the fact that a negative attitude is bad for your health should be sufficient to make most people stop before they have a tantrum. Unfortunately I met more toddlers trapped in adult bodies this week than I want to deal with the rest of the year. And it’s only February.
Since I’ve been watching Cesar Milan and his incredible ability to read dogs, plus Jackson Galaxy’s methods with cats, I’ve learned that calmness is the key to resolving many issues. The best way to work with pets, it seems, is to set the example, such as showing your dog that you are calm, so they should also be calm. I have practiced Cesar’s technique on a friend’s dog; I took a moment to relax before approaching because the dog was in the passenger seat of the car and might have leapt out the window if overexcited, being prone as he is to being a bit hyper. He stayed totally chilled out and sat down in the car seat while the humans resumed talking. It does work.
Unfortunately I couldn’t tell the person with the “you people” tirade to chill out, and unfortunately there was a line of similar disgruntled people after that. Wasn’t one of my favorite weeks, but I wait patiently for the person who opens up an interaction with a greeting and a pleasant comment. It can erase a day’s worth of downers.
So take the time to chill out. Don’t waste your time with long-winded complaints and get your blood pressure up. We’ve got a right to breathe. Slowly. It’s good for all of us.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 