Navigating Annoyances with Grace and Grit

Listen to Navigating Annoyances with Grace and Grit

(00:02):

Well, hello there. Welcome back for another episode of Been There, learned that This is Dana Byers and I'm thrilled that we're getting to have a little chat today. And I do mean a little chat because when I put together these podcast episodes, I've got some bullet points, but I really like to be as conversational as possible. I love to imagine that you and I are sitting down maybe with a cup of coffee or a Coke Zero, which I literally have right in front of me and we are just talking about the things that we are facing in life and how to help each other through them. So with that in mind, I'm just going to dive right into what I want to talk to you about today and that is how to handle when we are annoyed and I'm talking about this because if you are a human who has walked the planet more than five minutes, you have likely experienced being annoyed at some point, if not multiple times throughout the course of one single day, okay?

(01:02):

It is not unusual for the human experience to involve being annoyed. It's very common. This is something I've talked to so many men and women that I've coached over the years or just friends that I've had chats with. Whatever we experience being annoyed, it's hard to know what to do. And for those of you who are listening who are like me, maybe a type A driven, kind of accomplishment oriented individual, you might think the most efficient way to deal with being annoyed is to just brush it under the rug. We either think we've forgiven someone or process the circumstances when in fact we really haven't. And what happens is those experiences stack up. I mean, you can't look at a person and literally tell, okay, this is someone who's carrying around a lot of frustrations, but you'll begin to either notice in yourself or in other people a diminished capacity to be present or diminished capacity to understand other people because they don't understand themselves.

(02:06):

So I love through conversations like this to talk about turning the focus inward, not to be selfish, but because our starting point is to understand how God wired you and me, and that allows us to process the things that we face and then in a much more healthier approach, love and lead the people around us better. So I want you to think about the last time you're annoyed. Maybe you're annoyed right now. I was recently annoyed when I showed up to appointment and my service provider was not there, not available, hadn't messaged me, and I got frustrated. And you may have experienced that if someone is late for an appointment with you or a scheduled meeting, maybe a person responded to a text message or an email, but they didn't really give you a clear response. It's not clear enough so that you can't proceed and that annoys you.

(03:04):

Maybe something happened at the office that you weren't included in and you aren't up to date or aware of what's going on. You feel a little bit out of the loop. It could be that someone in your life made a decision without considering you or maybe the needs of your department that you lead and you're feeling left out. Another common annoyance is just if someone doesn't respond to us, we might think that they've cut us off or they've ignored us, and we kind of start this downward spiral. When we get annoyed, it happens much more quickly, I think, than we realize. So here's what we're going to do. Think about the thing that's annoying you that you've not processed yet. Go ahead and bring that to your mind and take a deep breath. You can exhale that stress, you can experience that feeling of frustration without falling apart, and it's helpful to remember that frustration because it's going to allow you to authentically process it instead of brushing it under the rug.

(04:07):

And so we're going to start with identifying what might be possible. Trust me, your brain's going to want to tell you, Nope, Dana, I already know this person. This person is not trustworthy or they've let me down before. I can't depend on them. They're forgetful. You're going to want to label and diagnose what has happened here, but frankly, you really don't know. If you knew you would be able to act on what happened, but you don't know yet. You just experienced being annoyed and you weren't quite sure what happened. Yes, it is entirely possible that they're forgetful. Maybe they aren't trustworthy in a unique situation, but it's also possible that they got sick. Maybe something has come up and they need to talk to you face to face. Maybe they're lacking all the information they need from you or some other resource. Maybe their power went out.

(05:03):

That happened to me recently. Someone didn't get a project to me by a deadline and they said, Dana, I'm so sorry we lost power. Can you give me a four or five hour extension? Absolutely. I was thrilled to do that. Maybe this individual, their leader or their boss at work has redirected them and they're just no longer as focused as they were on the project that you've been working on. And then of course, maybe they just forgot they were so many possibilities of what could happen here, but I want you to prevent yourself from that downward spiral that starts to happen. The second we get annoyed, you and I start labeling, identifying, diagnosing either the individual or the circumstances and we are just sure we know what has happened. So when you take that deep breath, you are stopping the downward spiral of all the thoughts that you have, all the judgments you have about the scenario, and it's going to allow you to just pause for a moment and consider, indeed, there are multiple possibilities here.

(06:02):

Now, you may be right, but you need to acknowledge there are multiple possibilities here. It does not serve you or the people involved. If you label the scenario, make a snap judgment and try to move forward. Now, once you've acknowledged there are multiple possibilities here for what annoyed, you get to make a decision, you can decide, do I even really need to act on this? Because what you've done is you've paused just enough to calm yourself down. You've stopped that downward spiral and you may not need to act on it. If someone is late, you might be able to just reschedule or you may want to let them know that it didn't work out for you and you're not interested in doing business with them anymore. Whatever that looks like, you might need to take action. But if you haven't heard back from someone, you may or may not actually need to follow up.

(06:58):

You see, if you are going to act on it, I think the main, and probably almost the only reason you would need to act on it would be to make sure that the other individual or people involved are actually okay. And you have to ask yourself, do I care? And that may seem like a funny question, but truly, do you really care if they're okay? If you do check in, if your intent is not to check in and make sure that they're well, you could really run the risk of coming across as passive aggressive. And I know you know what I mean, right? When you get an email from someone who's like, Hey, hey Dana, just checking in. Want to make sure you have everything you need? Let me know as soon as you have X, Y, Z, whatever they might be waiting for. And I'm saying that carefully because you and I don't have to worry too much about how we come across if our intent is pure and appropriate, but it is easy for us if we are always checking in on people to let them know that they're not meeting our expectations.

(08:03):

It's very easy for us to be understood or labeled or appropriately identified as people who are passive aggressive. And so I want to ask you, is it worth it to you? Is it worth it to you to consistently be checking in to push people to get the results that you want? Because these types of events that start out with you being annoyed, you still have the capacity even though you experience that feeling of being annoyed, of being frustrated, the power is still in your hands to choose what's going to happen next, how you're going to respond if you're going to respond to them at all. Because like I said, these types of events can lead you towards whether it's intentional or unintentional. It can lead you towards creating a passive aggressive scenario. If you're not careful, a scenario where specifically you're reaching out to people constantly to give them reminders, just following up with you just in case you need something, wanted to make sure you're okay.

(09:08):

It's wonderful to check in on someone if they've annoyed you to make sure they're okay. If you indeed care if it's not significant and it's not an emergency, I want to remind you that your job is not to be everyone's assistant and to remind them of things. You are not everyone's assistant. If you take this on to be your role, to check in with your peers that you're waiting for follow up from or to check in with people you may have hired who aren't quite doing their job. If you take on this role, then if they truly are forgetful people, they will allow you to do that. They'll allow you to take on that role and they might actually become dependent on, you hear me say that again? Whether we're talking about work or your marriage or your parenting, if you identify yourself, if you give yourself that job of checking in on everyone, even though they've annoyed you of checking on them to make sure you get what you want out of them, they will either be significantly frustrated by you and or they will allow you to be in that role, meaning that you have created more work for yourself.

(10:23):

That is not what we want to do. I do not want you to create more work for yourself, and I want you to be aware that you might actually be doing that. So as a general rule of thumb, for me personally, I generally only follow up if there's money involved, specifically if there's a deadline with money, a proposal maybe that I've offered someone or maybe a payment I need to make or a payment from someone else. Or if we're making a money decision, that's usually something that would allow me to follow up to feel confident in following up, first checking in on the individual because I do want to authentically care more about them than I do about the project that we might be engaged in. At the end of the day, I want them to know I care more about who they are as a human and what's going on in their life than I do about this project or this scenario.

(11:13):

These circumstances that we're working on together, if it involves money or very specific tight deadline, I think is of no problem to follow up at all. Otherwise, you might just let it breathe for a little bit and see how the other individual responds. They might have their own consequences to their actions that they need to experience so they can shift their daily habits of communication. Or maybe, like I said when we discussed earlier, there are multiple possibilities. If that individual is sick, they're going to reach out to you when it's appropriate for them, and you don't have to be sending things to their phone or their email inbox that's creating more work for them. So if you follow up, I think it would be okay for you to state why you're following up. So instead of just saying, Hey, just checking in, you might say, Hey, I want you to know, so-and-so maybe your boss or someone on your team.

(12:08):

So-and-so has asked me for an update. Could you get that to me? Let them know that it's not just you creating work for them, but that there's a really specific reason to check in. And like I said, you don't have to come across as passive aggressive, but you also don't have to come across as the kindest individual on the planet, and I think you know what I mean. I'm sure you've received those texts where they're like, Hey, how's it going with so-and-So no worries if you can't get to it. Not a big problem. Emojis, all the hearts, exclamation points, all of those things. I'm being a little dramatic, but it's true, and I've done this myself. We don't want to come across as pushy, but if you really do need to follow up, don't mince your words. They need to know that it's important so that they're able to respond appropriately with the information decision or follow-up that you need.

(13:02):

Because people don't realize generally that they're causing a delay unless you tell them. They often don't realize. And so you might need to tell them if is there's money involved or a specific deadline. One thing I sent recently to a person was a follow-up where I just said, Hey, so-and-so I'm feeling like I'm out of the loop on this project. Can you send me the latest at your convenience? There was not a deadline yet, but I had a personal deadline I was not able to share with them yet at that point. So just wanted to give them an opportunity to throw their hat in the ring for the deal that we were working about without having to push them too much, but also being clear that I really was feeling out of the loop so they knew why I was reaching out. Side note here.

(13:49):

If you're in the middle of a project with someone, I think using the communication approach of a text or an email is completely fine. If it's an ongoing project and it's not like it's come to an end, you'll have plenty of opportunity to loop around, wrap up the project, hopefully with a nice little bow on the package and talk about what worked, what didn't work, maybe what you would do differently next time. So if it's ongoing, a text or an email would be fine, but if you're really wrapping up a project with maybe a final decision or a couple final points, I personally feel that a zoom call, a phone call, and ideally face-to-face are best because if this project is coming to an end, you really want to close all the open loops and you want them to understand the tone of your voice, right?

(14:38):

Like I might send you a text that says, I really care about you, and you read it to say, I really care about you, but when I'm sending the text to you, I'm thinking I really care about you. I want to make sure that we work well together. The intonation is so important to capture there. So if the thing that has caused annoyance is something that is happening at the end of a project, I challenge you to end it well, to pick up the phone, get on a zoom call, meet them in person, and make sure that they hear your heart and your intent so that they get the appropriate feedback so they can do better next time. But also that you're able to get the appropriate feedback as well and immunize yourself against coming across as passive aggressive. So now that we've talked about what following up might look like, I know some of you might've already decided that you don't really need to follow up on the thing that annoyed you in those circumstances or with that individual, and that is completely fine.

(15:39):

You will figure that out by intuition over time, what is correct to follow up with and what is not. But I want to get to the meat, the heart, the extra credit bonus work, if you will, of how to handle being annoyed. And this is something you won't hear a lot in many other places. I believe. I haven't heard this many places now. What I have heard is how to follow up with tact. What I haven't really heard about is the next step of helping yourself understand why in the heck did you get annoyed in the first place? Okay, we're going to get a little meta here. We're going to look at things a little more broadly. I want you to zoom out, keeping in mind this scenario that you identified at the beginning of the episode, I want you to ask yourself, why did this event or this person trigger the feeling of being annoyed within me?

(16:35):

When we get annoyed or we're frustrated, sometimes we're made to feel unimportant. I've coached a couple clients who when they're annoyed with something, they feel like they've been abandoned or forgotten. I've coached individuals who, one individual in particular who had been part of a layoff and then something in their next job, they weren't involved in a conversation that they felt they should have been involved in, and it triggered and then triggered within them a fear of maybe they weren't performing well on their job or maybe they were going to be laid off again. And it's completely understandable that all of us have circumstances that lead up to the exact moment that we've become annoyed that color or influence why we feel annoyed, and the degree to which we feel annoyed. Think about it. You could have five people line up and you could see them watch a room of children playing, and let's say maybe the children accidentally break some nice pieces of ceramic.

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Those five people who are watching this happen will have five different levels of annoyance based upon what they're watching. I'm not kidding, you lined up five. Some of them would have high blood pressure watching a nice piece of ceramic being broken, and some of them would say, okay, no big deal. Now, no judgment. It doesn't really matter in the moment in this scenario why they respond the way they do. But there are reasons that they respond differently, just like there's a reason that what you experienced annoyed you and it may not annoy others. And so when you have that feeling of being annoyed, that is your brain and your body sending you a message. And that's why this is so important for you to capture. Yes, being annoyed happens, but it's really an opportunity for you to understand yourself better. What are you trying to tell yourself?

(18:31):

What is the message here? What does God want you to understand based upon the circumstances that annoyed you? Are you worried about getting fired? Are you concerned that your child is having trouble in school? Do you have fear that you're going to run out of money before the end of the month? You see, when we are triggered by something, it's one thing to acknowledge that we were triggered and to determine how we want to respond. But the next level leader, which is who you are and who you're becoming, the next level leader is the individual who sits back and asks herself, why do I feel this way? Why did I allow that to annoy me? And you can allow it to annoy you, but that feeling behind it is the one that has more power over you than you likely want to allow. I mentioned that client who had a fear about being laid off.

(19:28):

Again, it was a completely legitimate experience that she had that led to the fear, but the likelihood of her being laid off again just wasn't high. She really had to be able to navigate feeling left out and a fear about losing her job and reconcile that was something that had happened in her past and recognize that they're not directly linked, even though her brain was labeling it as such and was leading her down the spiral of, oh my gosh, this is happening all over again. I know that you are like the rest of us and you have chosen unintentionally or intentionally to connect circumstances in your life that may or may not be directly related. So if you can capture the feeling behind that sense of being annoyed, that feeling and your understanding of it and your ability to deal with that feeling is going to empower you to be less annoyed and to respond with greater maturity whenever you are annoyed.

(20:31):

So whenever you've identified what that feeling is that allowed you to be triggered in that scenario, that potentially the feeling of being left out, unimportant, forgotten, abandoned, you name it, I want you to ask yourself, where else is this emotionally charged belief impacting my life? So if you have an emotionally charged belief that you are easily forgotten or you're forgettable, that could really impact the way you parent children. If you have a belief that you are not important, that's going to significantly and directly impact the way you engage in your dating relationships or your marriage. If you have a fear of getting fired or that you're constantly failing at your job, that's going to impact the level of risk that you will take in the workplace because that fear can be so all consuming. So once you've identified what that belief is, now you have the ability to look at it as something that may or may not be true.

(21:39):

And you're going to go back to what we did at the beginning of this episode, and that is to identify what else is possible here. Am I really forgotten? Am I really abandoned? What else may have happened in my life that led me to form that conclusion? Now, hear me say, I understand you may literally have been abandoned in a specific scenario, and I acknowledge that, and I don't want to water that down or play that down. If that's true, please accept that as true. But if there are other factors that have played into the beliefs and decisions that you've made about yourself and your circumstances, be willing to admit those. As we age, it becomes less comfortable to stay in sort of this black and white thinking. I want to invite you to accept being in the gray more, if you will, which means to admit that yes, there are some hurtful elements that have contributed to the beliefs that I've formed about myself and my life circumstances, but there are also some beautiful things about my life, about myself, about my circumstances, and about God that I have not allowed to really shine into this current circumstance, to allow me to be less likely, to be annoyed, and to have just a greater sense of peace and enjoyment in where I'm at today.

(23:06):

So friends, please don't let this podcast just end and forget this exercise. Like I said, we all limit ourselves when we don't uncover what the thoughts are that are leading to our capacity to be annoyed easily in life. So I'm challenging you to just stop right now and consider your recent annoyances, and instead of ignoring it and moving full steam ahead in your life, I want you to just give yourself the gift of time. Really process what annoys you and why. And once you decide if you need to act on that or not, you're going to be able to take the next significant step that few people take, and that is

(23:44):

To understand the belief behind why you were triggered to being annoyed. Once you can tackle that belief, let some light shine on that, on who God says you are and what all of us know about you and see in you. Once you allow that light to shine onto that belief that is limiting, you are going to unlock a much greater capacity to handle all the circumstances and people that bring a sense of annoyance into your life. All right, friends, thanks so much for joining me for our chat today. I'll catch you on the next episode.