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.

Reading the Quiet Moments Between Life’s Changes

Life changes from time to time, but in between these changes are long periods where things stay the same. And if you're not happy with your life or how things are going, then these periods can seem like forever. I always thought of time as not being my friend at all.

I was always racing against it, losing it, or wasting it. And there was never enough of it. But in the last ten years, I've learned to work with it more.

I still often don't feel like I've got enough time to do everything, but I'm managing it better now. In the last ten years, my life, for the most part, has been changing in a good way, and there have been some, what I would call landmark changes, mixed in with other smaller changes. But first, I want to talk about the times in between.

Because the spaces in between the changes are important to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, this time helps me get used to the changes that have happened. Although it's very difficult for me to be patient in this part of the process.

As soon as I have change for the better in one area of my life, I instantly want change in the other areas too. But that's not how change works for me. So even though I think I'm ready for more change, I've found that I do need time to settle into it and get comfortable with it.

And this could take months and, for some things, even years. This "waiting" period also helps me get ready for the next change. Some change needs to be prepared for.

So now I need to talk about the changes. There are different kinds of changes that happen in my life, and they can be put into three categories. The first and easiest kind is an opportunity for change that comes to me out of the blue, without me doing anything.

This happened to me quite a few years ago. I was in a job that I didn't like that wasn't going anywhere, and suddenly I got a call offering me a better job. I didn't even have to think about it, I just knew it was the right thing to go for.

The second type of change is change that I have planned for. But of course, you never really know if something is going to happen until you do it. My wife and I wanted to move house, but we weren't really sure if we would be able to afford it.

And there were a few moments when we thought it wasn't going to happen. But we reached a point in our preparations and decided to go for it, and we were successful. The third change is something that is not planned and just starts spontaneously, just like this YouTube channel.

I haven't had the time or the motivation to do anything new for a long time. But the idea hit me one day, and I really felt like it would be a good thing for me to do. Starting something by myself and taking the initiative to do it in order to bring about change in my life had to feel right.

If change is forced too much by my own will and desire, then it never works for me. These three kinds of change have two things in common. First of all, there is an element of risk.

They involve me taking a chance. And secondly, they involve me needing to trust that things will work out for the best.

How to Wait Out Trouble Without Making It Worse

Of course, my relationships with my loved ones are different from those with the other people I know or meet. My loved ones "love me," and I behave differently with them because of that. I also spend the most time with them, so their roles in my life are "bigger." My relationships with my family have been and still are, to some extent, the area where I have a lot of my...let's call it "trouble." It's unavoidable, and each person gives me trouble differently.

It could be an argument with my wife about jobs around the house, or my kids fighting with each other and me having to get involved. And I used to just fall into these situations and only realize when I was in them that a time of trouble had started. But now I can recognize when it's starting, and I can get ready for it.

One of the most important things about these times of trouble, and how they make them different from other interactions I have, is that they all have one thing in common. They all make me feel horrible, like my whole life is off balance. When a loved one is making trouble for me, I've learned through trial and error that sometimes I need to act, and sometimes I don't.

But definitely, the worst thing I can do is to react. If I react, the situation goes into a downward spiral for me, and I end up having even more trouble. If it's one of those situations with my kids, I have sometimes found that my emotions are stronger than they should be in that situation.

I don't mean I have anger issues or anything like that, it's just that I can feel myself being disproportionately annoyed by the situation, and although I'm thinking, "Why am I reacting so strongly," I can't stop myself. But it's because I've reacted... and that was a mistake.

Sometimes I have to act, and I'll talk more about that in a second, but most of the time what I need to do is to not act at all. If it's a situation where, for example, my wife is complaining about me or another situation where I'm being criticized in some way, I just have to sit tight and wait for the trouble to finish. This includes putting aside what I'm feeling or what I want or what I want the other person to think about me.

Of course, I can't always do this, or I can hold out for a while, and then I just can't stop myself from reacting. Mistake. And so sometimes I do need to act, but it's not what you might think.

At those times, what I really need to do is to get busy doing something. But something completely unrelated. Something productive like cleaning up in the kitchen or helping one of my kids with something.

When I do this, after a certain amount of time, the trouble fades away. And I know it's gone because I can't feel that horrible feeling anymore.