Not Every Fight Deserves Your Reaction

In our lives, we experience what I call trouble. It comes in many forms but usually from the same specific people in our lives. These people may be close to us, like people in our family, or they could be just people we know: friends or coworkers.

But it's important that we recognize who these people are and label them as such. Now, I'm not saying these people are bad people. In fact, they are more likely to be good people, and often they are people that we love.

But what trouble do these people bring into our lives? Well, one example is a situation where we are being criticized in some way by someone. They might say to us that we should be more like this or we should stop doing something.

In this situation, what we don't need to do is react and start having an argument with them. And we definitely don't need to take it as a personal attack and one where we need to defend ourselves. We don't even need to say that we will do things differently.

We just have to sit tight, be non-committal, and wait for the trouble to finish. But the doubt still remains. Do we need to change?

Maybe, maybe not. One thing is for sure, though: we are being shown an area where we need to do something differently or approach something in a different way. And would it be better for us if we did change how we act in that part of our lives that is being criticized?

Maybe. And are we going to change? Well, we will find out because the next time a similar situation comes along, we might decide to do things differently.

And because part of who we are is how we act and we have acted differently, then we have slightly changed ourselves. But there is some danger here. There's always a thin line between changing yourself to make yourself a better person and changing yourself to be what someone else wants you to be.

And where that line is is something that we have to decide for ourselves. Usually, though, to help us with this, there is a good indicator of when not to change yourself. Sometimes the trouble that these people bring to us is played out in our heads.

They say something to us, and then later we think about what they said over and over again, usually because it really annoyed us. And this makes us question ourselves and our own actions. Did we do the right thing or did we do enough in that situation?

Usually, the answer is yes, but only after our brains have replayed the situation a dozen times will our minds finally be satisfied that we did do the right thing. And then we can move on. Confirming that what we did was right changes how we feel about who we are and gives us confidence that we can take into the next situation.

When It Feels Worse Than It Should - Regain Balance

Our own lives are undoubtedly the most important thing to all of us. How we feel in every waking second of every day is experienced by each of us and is personal to us. We spend every moment with ourselves, and those small details make up the fabric of our lives.

And it’s the small details that are important to me. But I don’t think I was always THIS sensitive. I feel like the volume has been turned all the way up on the seemingly trivial things that happen in my life.

The small things mean a lot to me. Sometimes someone will say something to me, and my mind just keeps replaying it over and over. It’s usually something that doesn’t sit well with me.

Something that feels wrong, that just grates against my mind and leaves a sore spot. Or something will happen at work, and I just can’t forget about it. Again, something that rubs me the wrong way.

And it’s usually when someone is trying to manipulate a situation to their own ends or when they have misunderstood a situation. Of course, I can’t control what thoughts pop into my head, so it’s like my mind is beating me into submission by replaying these things over and over again. And when it feels like I’ve had enough, it stops.

And again, these are small problems that are made more important and annoying because of the constant repetition of them in my mind. And a lot of the things that give me the most stress are things that I’m sure someone on the outside looking in would think are trivial. Even I think sometimes that if I’m stressing about this small thing, then my life must be pretty good.

But the level of that stress is so disproportionately high that it’s like some torture. At certain times, my life somehow feels much worse than it should feel. Because of this magnification of the small things, I’m constantly micromanaging my life and making sure I pay close attention to all the small details because if I don’t, then it brings even more trouble for me.

Another part of my life where the dials are turned up is on social arrangements. I will turn down invitations to things which are most likely going to be fun because, for no rational reason, I feel strongly that I don’t want to do it. Of course, nobody truly knows why they like one thing and not another, or why they prefer to do this thing over that thing.

But the feeling I have is not exactly that I wouldn’t like to do it. When I get invited to something, I don’t want to do it because it feels wrong, like something I shouldn’t do, or it would be better if I didn’t do it. And until I deal with it and decline the offer, it will keep coming back to my thoughts again and again until I’m sick of thinking about it.

Fortunately, though, there is another way because often the thing that feels wrong will be canceled and will just go away by itself. So through my own actions and through things that happen outside of my control, I am able to always do the things that I should do and not do anything that I shouldn’t.

Feeling Relief After Hard Times? What It’s Teaching You

Life is full of repetition. We do the same things day in and day out, week in and week out. Repetition gives us a feeling of comfort, and the repetitive nature of life makes us feel secure.

If things kept changing and were always different, it would be stressful and tiring. But, of course, a little change is nice. However, this everyday repetition isn't the kind that I want to talk about.

The repetition in my life is usually the bad kind - the repetition of undesirable situations. But sometimes, it can be positive. There are two kinds of repetition in my life.

The first is situations that have the same elements as other situations I have been in, like chances that I've had to change my job or positions that I was excited about and that almost happened but then didn't. The second is when the exact same thing repeats itself, like getting the same headache on the same day three weeks in a row. These are the kinds of repetition I can't ignore, even though I can never fully understand why these situations repeat.

Sometimes, if I think rationally about it, then I can see that for certain situations, it was a good thing for me to do the same thing again. In some cases, I could do it better or I could appreciate more what was happening, but more often than not, it seems pointless and, not to mention, painful to do it all again. And it often seems like I'm finished with repeating a certain type of situation, but then months or years later, it will come back to repeat again.

I'll explain this in more detail. I just recently had what I would call an emotionally charged conversation with my wife. In this type of conversation, both of us are saying what we feel and are trying to make the other person understand how difficult our lives have been.

But this conversation has happened multiple times over the years, and it must have been many years since it happened last. And this time, as in the other times, we were both saying the same things that we always say and pointing out the same problems that we have always had. And when it happens, this is when I feel like my life hasn't progressed or moved forward at all, and I'm back where I started.

And it's no one's fault. I'm not blaming my wife or my relationship with her. It's my life that isn't living up to my expectations.

I base these expectations on the trends my life has been following and how good my life has been lately. So if I get hit with something from the past, it seems like a backward step to me. And although my initial reaction when I repeat these situations is that I'm back at the beginning where I started, what I really have to do is to look a little closer.

When a situation repeats, I expect it to go as horribly wrong as the last time, but each time it happens, I feel like I am being let off from how bad it was before. This can either be by the result being more positive, the situation being over more quickly, or me feeling less damaged from the experience. Also, when I look back over my life, it's clear that although these situations repeat, I have seen a steady improvement in each area of my life.

And it might be that the repetition punctuates the progress that I've made and gives me a chance to reflect on where I was and where I am now.

Why I Stopped Trying to Convince People

One thing I never do anymore is try to convince people that I'm right about something. In fact, I've spent the last few years not even telling people what I think about anything, really, or sharing anything about my life. Until now.

I just reached a point where I thought it wasn't worth it and there wasn't any point to it. And of course, this didn't lead to any close relationships because you have to share part of yourself with people to make friends, and I just wasn't willing to do that. As I was looking at and listening to the people around me, I often heard them sharing their opinions and ideas about things, but not really listening to each other and then going away with exactly the same ideas that they had at the start.

And I realized that that was okay. One person's ideas weren't necessarily better or worse than another person's, so it didn't really matter. One thing that did get under my skin, though, was when people argued strongly about something.

Of course, everyone thinks that they are right, but these arguments were caused by one or usually both of the people trying to push their ideas onto the other person and convince them that they were right. And it's that part that I always had a problem with. Trying to force someone to think like me is fundamentally wrong, and it never works.

And that's why I never shared any part of myself. I didn't care if the people around me knew what I thought, thought how I thought, or agreed with what I thought. And even when I didn't agree with what they were saying or how they thought, I would always just let it go.

I don't feel any need to try to change their opinion or make them see "the truth" according to me. But I want to make a distinction here. There are things in the world that most people would agree are wrong, but what I'm talking about are the less serious issues.

So with that in mind, it's okay to let things go; however, sometimes it is very difficult. Human nature kicks in, and I want to win. I want to be right.

I want to show the other person how wrong they are and how they should think like me. Then we can both be right. But I found that this isn't really necessary at all.

Doing that doesn't make MY life better. So if it's a work situation, then I'll let it go, I'll try it their way, even if I think it will fail. And once I've committed to it, I'll give it my all.

I'll give it a chance to succeed because I'm the one who's chosen it. So for a long time, I haven't argued with anybody. I call it "winning without winning." I get to keep thinking I'm right, and I don't have to convince anybody else of it.

But that doesn't mean that I don't tell people what I think about something. Sometimes, like in a work situation, it's necessary to have an opinion. But that's all it is.

I'm not about to go to war over it. And that doesn't mean I don't care about the outcome or that I don't want the best result; it's just that it might be possible that I don't know what the best outcome is.