Pushing Buttons

You find yourself on the freeway moving along with traffic when some yahoo swerves around your car while flipping you off because in his eyes you were not traveling fast enough. Do you ignore him and shrug off his rudeness?

You are spending time with your parents for the holidays everyone is sitting around the fire enjoying the season. Out of the blue as she quite often does your mother suddenly turns to you and asks “When did you gain so much weight?” Do you carry on as if nothing was said while your stomach becomes a pit of seething anger?

You are sitting in your jail cell I mean your cubicle, at the office when you overhear some coworkers gossiping as they stroll by. Your name comes up along with in conjunction with a sarcastic comment concerning the date you brought to the company Christmas party. Do you begin suffer from internal embarrassment when your eyes involuntarily stray to the picture of your current flame resting on your desk?

You are spending time with a friend or family member who knows you inside and out. For whatever reason they are in a bad mood to compensate for how they feel they make a rather rude comment that they just know will set you off. Do you fall into their trap and begin a verbal war with them?

Buttons.

We all have them and we all allow them to be pushed.

We can wake up in the morning with a blue sky, singing birds and in a perfectly wonderful mood. Until something like one of the above scenarios takes place and suddenly the sky is cloudy the birds are vultures and our mood is one overflowing with anger.

Why?

Why do we allow others to have this power over us?

Why do we let mere words or gestures ruin our day?

Why do we fret and worry about someone else’s opinion of us?

When we surrender the ability to control our moods we surrender the ability to create our own happiness. We allow ourselves to become puppets and we willingly present the strings to anyone who crosses our path.

The checker at the grocery store is having a bad day we give her our strings so she can share her bad mood with us.

The customer we deal with had a fight with his wife we give him our strings so we can wallow in misery along with him.
Ironically while allowing others to control our moods and our reactions we are only inflicting misery on ourselves.

When we give someone the power to ruin our day does our sudden change in moods affect them?

Do they develop a sense of guilt for taking their mood out on us?

In most case the answer is no. Like the destructive path of a tornado, they obliviously walk through life leaving shattered moods in their wake. The damaged are left to wallow in the mud of misery while the tornado moves on to the next cubicle.

Next time someone flips you off smile and wave.

Next time your mother makes a snide comment let it pass after all words cannot cause any real damage.

Next time you here someone gossiping about you or anyone else ignore the shallowness of the individual talking and take the high road.

Next time someone close to you pushes your buttons resist the impulse to push back. Instead ask them if everything is OK, you might be surprised by their answer.