Key 4: Know who or what pushes your buttons
All of us have buttons – triggers, pet peeves, whatever you may call them – that, when pushed, just irritate us until we want to scream. Perhaps you have a co worker who lives his life as if he is constantly at war with others to prove that his point of view is right. He will go to any length to prove his point. His voice is louder than the most and once he starts speaking he will continue to go on and on. Whatever point he makes, he will fight till the end to prove that it is right. He will make sure that he is in a battle for proving his point even if not a single person in the room agrees with him. He just refuses to see a point from others point of view. In short he is stubborn to the core about his views and generally believes he is always right. Even if he has to agree to others, he will do it showing that for the sake of saving time or for sake of moving forward he is ok to park his views for some time. But he will continue to bother everyone with his persistence. Let us call him Mr Stubborn.
Now, if you are a more subtle person yourself, a person like that may eat at you. When you go into a meeting with great ideas and a readiness to sit down and get straight to the point, Mr Stubborn who wants to draw attention towards himself, may flip your switches for frustration and rage. Even if you are not a sort of person who blurts out impulsive comments or otherwise go on the attack, your body language may give you away or you may find yourself spending the rest of your day obsessing over your lingering frustration.
Knowing what or who pushes your buttons and how they do it is critical to developing the ability to take control of these situations, maintain your poise, and calm yourself down. For this, you cannot think about things generally. You need to pinpoint the specific people and situations that trigger your emotions. Your buttons are bound to get pushed by a wide range of people and things. It could be certain people (Mr Stubborn), particular situations( like feeling scared or caught off guard), or conditions in the environment(noisy office colleagues). Having a clear understanding of who and what pushes your buttons makes these people and situations a bit less difficult because they come as less of a surprise.
Your self-awareness takes a quantum leap when you identify and discover the sourse of your buttons. You will have to find out why do these people and situations irritate you so much, when other, equally annoying people and situations do not bother you at all? Perhaps Mr Stubborn reminds you of your father who never listened to your point of view. You lived in the constant shadow for many years till you could find your space in the world and got people who cared for your views. Now, you sit beside his clone in every meeting. No wonder he is a trigger for your emotions.
When you know why your buttons are what they are opens doors to managing your reactions to your triggers.
Activity
Find out the sources of your buttons and jot down a list. Then spend some time thinking deeper into each. Ask yourself why so these people or situations irritate you? Is there a connection with your past. If there is one, try to objectively see the past without blaming you or the other person or situation. Accept that those things were bound to happen. They happened. Forgive and forget. You will be amazed how happy and energetic you will become by addressing this.
0 comments:
Post a Comment