We get upset about small or big things all the time, sometimes many times a day and often we stay upset for hours, days, years or even a lifetime. Imagine!
Available upsets are a dime a dozen: Self-driving cars. A disrespectful cashier. No cashier. A cheating partner or spouse. A kid who doesn’t want to learn. Gaining weight. Not gaining weight. Rain. No rain. No parking. Too many bicycles. Dirty streets. Republicans. Democrats.
The list goes on……………………
Upsets can be distilled to 3 major sources. It is not complex.
They are:
Undelivered communication
Unfulfilled expectation
Thwarted intention
I learned this in a seminar and I have been using it ever since.
An undelivered communication might be that you just had the most exciting meeting with Mark Zuckerberg and you want to tell somebody. But your friends don’t even look up from whatever stupid stuff they are doing, like creating an app that saves the world, and just grunt.
Or you get 10 robocalls in a row and can’t cancel them.
Or you get the 50,000th fake friend request on your Facebook page because your scammer thinks that you like military men in front of the American flag. And there is nobody to call to complain or punch out.
Or Amazon wants to deliver a package on Sunday and you can’t tell anybody to bring it during business hours and they leave it outside the door and it gets stolen.
An unfulfilled expectation is when you booked a beachfront hotel and the beach is 10 miles away, by car, and you booked it online. Or you are expecting a tax return but you owe taxes. Or you thought your relationship would last forever and it is irretrievably over.
A thwarted intention is when you organize your Dropbox and all business files rapidly start deleting by themselves without prompting and there is nobody to call. Or you want to throw a surprise party for your best friend and somebody blew the surprise. Or you want to be on time for the final interview of your dream job and you realize that you made a mistake and the appointment had been the day before.
How is possible to stay calm and not to get hooked and upset by the daily trials and tribulations?
The easy way is to have a 100% commitment to your own big vision in life.
The first step is to create your own vision, a commitment so exciting that you can’t wait to get up in the morning. And the vision needs to be big enough that you will ignite other people to work with you.
My vision for 30 years has been for people to have access to self-sufficiency, financial prosperity, abundance and power. When people have a life they love, they are calmer. I love the earth and want people to be peaceful.
Helping people to have their own homes has been one of my contributions towards my vision.
If the daily upsets come my way I allow myself a 10 second window of staying upset. If I need a little more time to calm down, I set a limit of how long I can stay upset. After that I am letting the upset go and start looking for solutions. „What would move the action forward so I can fulfill on my vision?“ That is the question to be asked. The answer to that is what my course of action is going to be. It cuts out any disruption if it does not move the action forward towards your goals. Getting rid of upsets quickly makes life fun.
