Hey, my beautiful friend. And how are you doing? I hope you’re getting stronger. I hope you’re getting better. I hope you’re healing. And if you’re having a tough time today, know something, I’m sending you a big, a super big hug and lots of good vibes, because I know you’re gonna get through this. You’re gonna get to a better place and you’re gonna move on and you’re gonna learn.
So what are we talking about today? Well, we’re gonna talk about getting annoyed and what to do with that. And the reason I wanna talk about this today, cuz I’m like super annoyed lately and here’s why I’m getting ready for a rather large trial. And when you’re a litigation attorney and you’re getting ready for trial.
The pressure’s on. Um, you gotta be on your top game and when I’m in this mode, I am so focused on doing the best job for my client and making sure that everything is perfectly done or as a perfect as it can be, that I don’t have a lot of tolerance for a lot of BS. So I tend to get annoyed very quickly.
But when I do that and I react from that place of being annoyed, it doesn’t serve me. and it just ends up being more of an issue than if I just took a little time out, breathed through the feeling of annoyance and approached everything a little differently. So let’s talk about getting annoyed and how we can work at.
Dealing with it and moving on from it and hopefully making better choices. So let’s get started. What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could have happened to you? I’m Doreen, YFA marital and family, lawyer, and certified life coach. I’ve been consulting women for over 25 years.
I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce. When you are going through divorce, your emotions are typically on edge. And when we’re going through any issue in our life, that’s challenging. Like I said, for me right now, it’s getting ready for trial.
You tend to be more easily annoyed. I mean, but most of us get annoyed by things and people, even when things are going pretty. But when you’re dealing with extra tough things, it’s a lot easier to let somebody push your button. Right. So what is it for you? Do you find your level changes when you are. Also dealing with some stressor in your life.
Like, let’s just say divorce well, if you are going through divorce or maybe you just finished your divorce or any other circumstance that’s going on in your life, you may find yourself a little more annoyed than usual. But being annoyed and the actions that we generally take from this place are usually not serving us and are generally not kind hearted for me when I am not under pressure.
I’m a person that isn’t really easily bothered by thing. I mean, somebody can cut me off in traffic and it might startle me, but I’m not one of those people that gets all crazy and starts yelling and screaming. You know, somebody might say something to me. That’s not kind, I kind of let it blow off. If I do get annoyed with something I’m usually easy, easily over it.
Um, what about you? What is your personality like? it always amazes me how people handle things so differently. The same thing, like let’s say you are in line, right. And. Another person is in line. Well, what I like to notice is the different personalities and annoyance levels. One person will be sitting there or standing there and they’re like, fine.
They’re happy. They’re talking to other people. They, you know, they look like they’re in a good place. You can say the hello to them. The answer back to you. Then you look at the up next person and they’re just like super annoyed. Like, why am I in line? Why is this taking so long, miss grumpy face or a Mr.
Grumpy face don’t wanna engage, don’t wanna talk. And why is that? Well, a lot of this just has to do with personalities, right? And of course, a stressor that’s going on in their life and where they might have to be et cetera. So the question is, what do. Do, when you feel annoyed, like, do you lash out or do you just blow it off or maybe approach dealing with a situation in a way that serves you better?
I’ve learned, but it’s taken me a lot of practice, how to curtail my lashing out over the years, mostly because of my work as a life coach and understanding my thoughts. So what happens is I know that I’m annoyed. I know why I’m being triggered right now, you know, because I’m getting ready for trial, but I know this, I know when somebody’s annoying me and what I do is I slow down.
I recognize the thought and I slow down before I react. Identifying what annoys you is also very important. Are you someone that gets annoyed with the same person or situation? On a regular basis, maybe it’s your ex for example, are you one of those people that when you’re in line you’re easily annoyed, or if you get cut off in traffic that you’re easily annoyed.
What annoys you think about that? And what do you do when you are. So for you, maybe you can start with identifying the things that annoy you on a regular basis. Think about how you generally handle respond to this. Then think about what happens when you handle it the way you typically handle it. And lastly, think about when you handle it that way.
What results are you? I’m gonna take an example of this because I was with a friend recently who has, um, a son he’s I would say probably, I think he’s nine, maybe 10 by now, but, um, I watched an interaction when I was, um, visiting with them and basically it went like this. Uh, we were in the kitchen area. He was sitting on the couch area and she asked him to bring his plate to the kitchen, to put it in the dishwash.
Her son basically just ignored her. Um, she said it again probably a little louder than maybe she should have. And then she yelled at him, bring it over now. Okay. Her son started crying. He did bring the dish over, but it was really an uncomfortable situation. He was crying. She was angry. I’m in the middle of listening to.
And the child ended up going back to the couch and he was just, you know, throwing a bit of a tantrum at that point. But anyhow, so I watched the interaction and I thought to myself, okay, she’s asked her son to bring the dish to the kitchen. He did not respond. She got annoyed. She then raised her voice and asked.
He didn’t respond. She got further annoyed. Then she yelled at him and then he brought the plate to the kitchen. So her annoyance level got to a level where her reaction from that place was to yell. I thought at a level that probably wasn’t needed. Right. Certainly didn’t serve the situation. She was upset.
The child was upset I’m I was there and just neutral, but I wasn’t comfortable. So the result of the action that she took of yelling at, as she did. Resulted in everybody being worked up and not a good situation or a good place. I don’t think it, there was any learning lesson by the child. There certainly wasn’t any comfort level, a mom that he understood, you know, that next time this is gonna be different.
So what I wanna talk about today is to make some suggestions on how to deal with annoyance differently because being annoyed, like I said, it’s just not a useful emotion. You want to switch the annoyance before the reaction? That is the key. Now I was using the example of the child, not listening to his mother, but this really can work with any time that you’re feeling annoyed on any circumstance.
I’ve spoken previously in many of my episodes about there’s a circumstance. There’s a thought that creates a feeling. The feeling we’re talking about today is annoyance that then stimulates or has a reaction and actions taken. And then you have a result and the feelings, you know, this works. For positive and negative.
Right now we’re dealing with a negative emotion, which is annoyance, but this also things can trigger thoughts, circumstance, trigger, thoughts that are pleasant, right. So when we’re talking about being annoyed, you know, let me be clear that you may want to be annoyed when stuff is not as you like it or expect it, right.
The awareness of the annoyance is a key, the awareness that it is an absolute choice to be annoyed and react or. But I wanna suggest that. And I think, you know, being annoyed doesn’t feel good. So I’m gonna bring in another example that happened to me, uh, yesterday, as a matter of fact. So I’m in trial mode.
My emotions are high I’m in a stressful situation. And I got an email from an opposing counsel on one of my cases and she, I call it a nasty. Nasty Graham, a nasty email, all kinds of just mist, TRUS, and posturing, et cetera, et cetera. And I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. I was annoyed. She’s one of those people that likes to email nasty things.
usually I can handle it better, but when I got the email, my immediate thought was, well, my immediate feeling was, this is annoying. Here we go. Again. I don’t have time for this. I’m in the middle of trial. Why are, am I always doing this dance with this, uh, opposing counsel? But because I know how to deal with my thoughts.
I knew I was annoyed and I made the decision to breathe. I made the decision not to send. An email response that I promise you would not be nice and would not serve me. Instead. I took the time to realize the email triggered the emotion of annoyance. I took a time out. I breathed, I literally closed my eyes.
I did some deep breathing, a brief meditation. and then I looked at them email again, and I made a different decision than just shooting off a response. I looked at the email and I said, you know what? I think it’s best that I just schedule a call with this person because there is a miscommunication here and I don’t want to continue to be annoyed.
I don’t have time right now to be annoyed. I’d rather just nip it in the. and have a call with her. So I asked my assistant to please schedule the call. Guess what? I spoke with the lawyer. We had a few little words, not much. I was able to keep my composure and the bottom line is that we resolved the issues in the email.
Now, if I would’ve done it the other way and just responded without taking that time out and really understanding that my annoyance was gonna have a reaction that would not serve me, could have gone a, a different place. I could have been in this email communication game with her all day, which I was not going to.
And those are the types of things that I’m asking you to recognize when you are annoyed, what are you gonna do with that annoyance? What’s gonna be your action on it. And how is it gonna serve you? You see when we don’t give ourself the time to stay with the emotion and notice. Causing the annoy, the annoyance, that feeling of getting annoyed, we do things like yell at our child, scream at the driver that just cut us off, send back a nasty response email.
All these types of things. You know what I’m talking about? We tend to react this way because we haven’t taken the time to process the why. W H Y of it, why are we annoyed? I mean, for example, my email that I received, they’re just words on the computer. Why am I making them mean more than maybe they need to.
In other words, sometimes we don’t understand. Most times we don’t understand where the other person that’s annoying us is coming from. And I’m not suggesting that again, you can’t make a conscious decision to be annoyed. You can be annoyed. You have a right to be annoyed when people do stupid things, right.
You have the right. It’s what you do with that. So like my friend whose child was not responding. Here’s what I would’ve suggest that she do. The child did not respond to mom’s first request. Maybe she asks again, but in the same tone, instead of yelling, the third time, what she could have done is thought about I’m annoyed.
He’s not answering. Wow. How can I get the best result here, which is to get the child to bring the plate to the kitchen, but also to teach him a lesson to engage with him. What she could have done. And this is just one of, probably many suggestions is she could have walked over to him, put her hand on his shoulder or taken his hand, got his eye contact and said, Hey, I’ve been calling you and asking you to bring your plate over.
Have you heard me? And whatever, he says, just continue. Next time I ask you, could you please do it when I first ask, but you gotta have that engaged contact eye to contact. Now what would’ve happened? The child would’ve probably gotten up at that point and taken the plate to the kitchen, the same result that happened when she yelled, but the way in which it approach would’ve been a better result for the whole circumstance.
She wouldn’t be as angry. The child wouldn’t have been crying and probably upset. I mean, he probably, would’ve not been super happy, but he certainly wouldn’t have been crying at the level that, that he was and the it would’ve been resolved and she could have taught him a lesson. Now there’s something else that I wanna talk about.
And I talk about this because it kind of plays into this right now when her child is not listening to her about bringing the plate to the kitchen. Then she could have taken this opportunity to also set a boundary with him. And that’s an episode nine of my podcast. I talk about episode eight is about internal boundaries that we have with ourselves.
And episode nine is about external boundaries boundaries that we place on others. Now, when you place a boundary on somebody, you have to give them a repercussion, but you have to control it. Meaning that if you don’t do this, then I will do. So with her child, what she could have done is had the same conversation in a, in a, in a softer tone, a loving tone.
Did you hear me? I asked you to bring your plate to the kitchen and then she could have continued and say the next time you don’t bring your plate. After you finished to the kitchen, you are going to end up losing a half an hour of time on your iPad or some other thing, something she can. And then with that boundary, she has to implement it.
She has to follow up with the repercussion and that likely would result in the child learning that you eat, you bring your plate to where it needs to go in the kitchen or else there’s a repercussion period. So a little tangent going off on their boundary, but I thought it was, um, you know, it just came into play with, uh, what I had seen with my friend and her child.
So back to being annoyed, getting annoyed and how we deal with it. Here we go. Step one. Don’t. Take a deep breath, literally close your eyes. Now, if you’re driving, please don’t close your eyes. Right. But breathe, breathe into it. Feel the emotion of being annoyed of getting annoyed and just let it run through you.
But don’t react just slow down. Step two. Determine what is annoying. You, you have to determine. It’s super important. Is it because the child didn’t immediately respond to bringing the plate to the kitchen? Is it because the person cut you off while you’re driving? Is it because you’re waiting in line and just wanna get going?
When we think about things that annoy us, you know, we’ll think about, well, people shouldn’t write stupid emails and people should learn how to drive. And we shouldn’t have to wait in line. I mean, these are just some general thought process that some of us carry around with us in life, whether they were learned from our childhood or other circumstances in our life.
They’re just thoughts that we have. What is interesting also is that most of our annoyance, when you really think about it, stems from what other people are doing other circumstances beyond our control. Right? So let’s keep that in mind that people are going to do. act and lines are gonna be there and they’re gonna cut us off.
And our children are not gonna listen to us. And these are just things that happen because people don’t behave in the way they should. Why don’t they just do everything the way we want them to do it. Right. Life would just be so much easier. So let’s look at one more quick example, right? Your ex let’s assume is late dropping off your child after his time sharing.
That would likely annoy you. Right. And you could be like, you know, thinking, first of all, you know, you’re annoyed and you’re feeling annoyed and you could be thinking he’s so rude. He doesn’t respect our cued me agreement. He’s just doing this to piss me off, et C, et cetera. And you could thank all these things and continue to get more annoyed or you could process the emotion.
Let it run through you take a little bit of a time out and say, yes, he’s running late. I wonder if they’re okay. I hope they had a good time. Maybe he just forgot about the time. now, I’m not suggesting that you don’t address the issue of being on time when it comes to dropping off the child. What I’m suggesting though, is that you handle it differently.
See, under the first circumstance, if you would’ve let yourself get all annoyed without thinking, you probably would’ve picked up the phone, you would’ve called them. Why are you not here? You’re always late. And it would’ve been a going around in circles. But when you think about it, and then you’re annoyed, but you’re calmer.
Right. What you might do is wait for him to get there, let your child come into the house, maybe walk with him to the car and then say, listen, I hope you had a great time today with our kid, but next time, could you do me a favor? Could you just let me know if you’re running late? It would be so very appreciated.
I mean, first of all, he would probably like fall over because he wouldn’t think that you’d be addressing it. That. And so might work. And second of all, it’s better for you. You’re not as worked up your child’s not walking into the house and mom’s all upset and angry right now, et cetera. Do you see what I’m saying?
I hope you do. It’s that the later the latter way of handling it is just better. For all involved, really, it may feel in the moment that yelling or lashing out feels better, but it doesn’t. And it is usually met with a defense and confrontation and it just leads to more annoyance look, being annoyed.
Usually doesn’t serve your life. It’s always going. To be around. You’re always going to be annoyed with things. That’s just the way it works as humans. Right. But you have to remember that it’s just a human emotion. That’s it? It’s just an emotion, learning how to understand it and manage it will help you have emotional control.
In fact, next time, I’m gonna talk about emotional adulthood. Right. Get ready for that one. But sticking with today’s topic about getting annoyed, you know, when you’re able to practice what I’ve discussed today, it’s going to bring you more connection to people around you. I do this a lot with my team.
It’s easy for me to get annoyed because I’m, you know, a. I work very fast. I expect perfection. I run a tight operation and you know, I don’t have a lot of time for nonsense in my business. So I’ve had to learn how to deal with this with my team. And let me tell you. I have the most amazing team now. And I think a lot of it has to do with the way I approach them.
I’m not perfect. I still get aggravated. I still let that annoyance level take me to a place. I shouldn’t go. And I have to always like catch myself, but I want you to try it on for size. Try it for a few weeks. See how it feels when you deal with your annoyance on a different level. And let me know how it goes for you.
I’d love to hear from you give some examples how it worked out, right? What you felt like, how you. identified it. Did you breathe through it? And what your end result was? You can always reach me at DFA. That’s for Doreen YFA DFA, Y a FFA at life balance, lawyer.com. All right. My beautiful friends. Listen, go out there.
Have an amazing, amazing week. I think the world of you love yourself. Be kind to yourself, love others. And remember, yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce. All right, bye. And until next time, have an amazing rest of the day. And remember, yes, you can buy everybody. Thanks so much for listening for tips, updates, and expert advice.
Be sure to visit your amazing divorce.com. And remember my friends. Yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce. See you. Views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by YFA family law group or your divorce law center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives.
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