Sometimes people can just be mean. Maybe they’re having a bad day, maybe there is something going on in their life that is really difficult, or maybe they’re just bitter about the choices they’ve made and the consequences of those choices. Who knows? But that does not give them the right to take it out on the people around them, especially when the recipient of such mean behavior just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.”
Bertrand Russell
This past week has been a strange one, with Mercury still retrograde and the full moon eclipse, and people have been rude and sometimes even just plain mean. One of my colleagues was the victim of such juvenile behavior; he was yelled at in public, called a piece of …. and cussed at, because the person who did this misunderstood the situation and chose to react angrily. The person refused to listen to my colleague and only after ranting loudly and for quite a while, calmed down enough to realize that he was making a spectacle of himself and that he had overreacted. He then proceeded to divulge that he was going through a rough time and wasn’t dealing with it well. My colleague handled the situation in as professional a manner as he could, and at the end of the experience, the person who started this chaotic situation was like a completely different person. He apparently needed to get a lot of anger off his chest, so to speak.
“Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.”
Joel Osteen
I know sometimes we can let our emotions take over (usually after we have stifled them for quite a while) and then BOOM! It all explodes, and chaos ensues. However, this damages people’s reputations and also causes a lot of hurt feelings, some of which may never heal. If we pay attention to and work on our emotional intelligence, we will be better able to manage our emotions and communicate with others more effectively.
“You cannot do kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It can sometimes be hard to find an appropriate outlet for our strong feelings, but by taking our problems out on other people, we are only making things worse. Most of us want to behave in a way that reflects our best self, and when we don’t, after we calm down, we are appalled at our behavior. This is why it is imperative that we find healthy ways of expressing and releasing emotions (such as through physical exercise, therapy, or EFT) so that we can focus on controlling our emotions rather than letting them control us.
“Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”
Travis Bradberry
The Weekly Post 