While driving down the road close to my house, I reached for my pocket and noticed my wallet was missing. Luckily, I was only a short distance from home, so I quickly turned around to go back and get it. Since wasting time is a one of my pet peeves, something as simple as forgetting an item aggravates me. Before I used GPS, I got lost while driving to unknown places. Unless it added significantly more time, I’d stay going in the wrong direction and try to find a new way to get to where I needed to be. For some reason, I simply couldn’t stand turning around and going backwards.
The thought losing five minutes was upsetting, even though it was such a minor thing. However, in addition to everything else that went wrong earlier that day, this fell in line like a soldier behind all the others. Do you ever wonder why it seems like the more things go wrong, the more they tend to go wrong? Once we get aggravated, the more we want to give in to that aggravation. Our whole mindset is shifted in a negative way and tends to stay that way until we make a conscious decision to put a stop to it.
Computers and phones are a constant source of aggravation for me. Despite the mind-boggling miracles these devices are, mine always seems to lag behind. Working over networks can be even worse because of antivirus software and other protective measures. My brain is always pulling me forward, but my devices are telling me to hold up for a second. There are lots of others impatient like me. Anytime I’m working on the computer and one of the windows is stuck on the screen, its next to impossible to resist the urge to click repetitively in the same spot or at random spots on the screen ten times. In a fit of rage, its forgotten that terrible things usually happen after doing that.
It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting larger in diameter along the way. The junk sticks and keeps adding to the original snowball. As the day progressively spins out of control, it’s up to us to put a stop to it. Otherwise, more dreadful things tend to happen. It is not always easy to do this because it takes getting control of our emotions. Anger doesn’t like to be tamed. Instead, it yearns to be free; unleased. But anger is a tricky emotion because it tends to make us stupid. We’ve all done things in a fit of anger that we regretted later on.
Before all the trivial things pile up to the point that they crush us like major things, take a step back. Find a way to not be affected by every little thing that comes your way. When you are able to relax more and not take everything to the extreme, the day will slowly change into something better. Laughter is a great relief to help with this. The bigger the laugh, the more steam you let out. Almost like magic, when you learn to laugh off the trivial things, their mockery seems to disappear!