In the Miooddle

In our own natural state of being human, sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

 

My husband works out of town most of the week. It isn’t what either of us signed up for; but in this economy, he’s employed, and that’s a good thing. Except that it hasn’t always been such a good thing. I have had my fair share of resentment, anger, and feeling sorry for myself, as I shouldered the burden of caring for our 11 year old, running my own business and in general upkeep of 5 acres, dogs, horses, a vineyard and home. I tried hard, but lots of times I was just plain pissed off. We were doing our best to cope, so we set up some rituals to help us stay connected so I wouldn’t feel totally abandoned. He would always call me at the same time each day on his work phone, and we made sure we had plenty of family time when he was home.

 

So it came to pass one day, that at a time when he would normally call me, he didn’t. Enter Righteously Angry Woman! How dare he do (fill in the blank) instead of remembering to pick up the phone and call his long-suffering and ever so put out wife! I fired off a cold and nasty email, aimed at letting him know how justifiably hurt and angry I was.

And he answered, but because by this time he was texting on his phone, from inside an airport, and because we’re “50-somethings” who don’t really have this whole texting/ dexterity thing down, what should have been

“did you ever think that I might be in the middle of a huge disaster”

became...

“did you ever thionk I might be in the miooddle of a hiuge diaster?”

There had been a major equipment failure on the job he was working on and he couldn’t stop long enough to call me.

Wow. After I finished picking myself off the floor where I had fallen from laughing so hard, I had a reality check. By reacting only to the information I had, I had ended up angry, hurt and vindictive. If I had just waited until I heard from him I could have spared myself a lot of hurt and angry feelings, not to mention a big fat apology.

Armed with only the information that I had (he hadn’t called at the appointed time), I made a giant leap to a conclusion that had nothing to do with reality. How many times do I do that? How often do I think I know the motivation for someone’s actions when I really have no idea what’s going on with them??

Because this has become an important message for me to learn, I wanted to pass it along to you.  We so often make something out of nothing, or put ourselves in the "miooddle" of a drama that can easily be avoided if we would stop jumping to conclusions and simply just Calm Down.

Now when I’m in a situation where I’m having some kind of emotion about where someone else is coming from, I try to ask myself questions to get to the root of what is really happening.

• Where is this coming from?
• What emotions am I feeling that I’m bringing into the situation?  (Anger, fear, etc)
• Do I really know what is happening, or am I just jumping to conclusions?
• Is this really a "diaster" to stress out over, or is it just a moment of chaos?

Now, my family and my employees use the word ‘diaster’  regularly when situations may be chaotic but are not really a real disaster.  It has become a joke that we all make when things seem to be going south.  And since this moment, I'm constantly reminded to stop contributing to the stress in my life by creating my own self made diasters!