Annoying people (Five Minute Flourishing)

Craig 00:01 

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, the podcast that helps you live an excellent life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke. 

Annoyances are just a fact of life. You know, you have to deal with them from time to time. We all get in annoying situations, sometimes many times in a single day. 

Recently, for example, my wife and I were going to Shreveport for a doctor's appointment. It's a two hour drive each way. We get there, go to check in, they have no record of the appointment. I wasn't very pleased because we had driven two hours, so we asked could they work us in. The receptionist went back and checked and said, Nope, sorry. Can't work you in. The doctor was seeing 60 patients that day, 60, that's six zero patients that day. No wonder you can't get a doctor to spend any time with you. 

My reaction was pretty muted. You know, I felt like I could have gotten really angry and been fairly justified in doing so, but that would've just fed into Tracy being upset, and it would've made a bad situation worse. It would not have changed anything. There would be no profit in me getting mad. 

Craig 01:13 

The bit about feeding into Tracy being upset is really important. There's a thing called emotional contagion. I did an episode about it, I'll put a link in the show notes, where your emotions kind of feed over into other people's emotions, kind of like a cold spreads.

So, you have to deal with annoyances. In that moment, I faced a choice. It was an annoying situation, I could get upset about it, or I could just deal with it. And those are just something that we have to deal with usually on a daily basis. There's sometimes there's no way to avoid potentially annoying people or situations. 

Craig 01:55 

But here's the thing, in order for something to be annoying, two conditions have to exist. First, there has to be an annoying situation or a potentially annoying situation. Second, you have to be annoyed by it. As I said, sometimes there's no choice. You're just gonna find yourself in potentially annoying situations, but that potentially is a really important word.

You actually have the choice to not be annoyed by it. You know, you can't always control whether or not you're in a situation, but you can control whether or not you're annoyed by it. 

Let me paraphrase, the stoic philosopher Epictetus here, "People are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinions about the things." He also goes on to say, “When someone irritates you, you must know that it's your own opinion that irritates you.” So some person or event is annoying or irritating only if you let yourself become annoyed or irritated. 

Craig 03:01 

Here's a thing about that, when you do get annoyed, you give that person or that event power over you, you've let them get you annoyed. Take the power back by controlling your reactions. 

So there are two basic ways that you can try to reduce your daily annoyances. First, you can avoid potentially annoying situations and you can avoid, this is the second one, you can avoid being annoyed. I'm gonna focus on the second one. 

When you face a potentially annoying situation, ask yourself two questions, in the overall cosmic scheme of things, is this person or situation really worth getting upset about?

In the Shreveport event, wasting four hours wasn't really that big of a deal in a lifetime of over 700,000 hours. I think if I did the math right, that's over 80 years and I hope I live that long. Look at it this way, if you've got $700,000, are you gonna lose your mind over four bucks? Hopefully not.

Craig 04:12 

The second question to ask is whether or not there's anything to be gained by becoming upset. There are some rare situations when a little bit of righteous indignation is appropriate, but that's really rare. Almost always the answer is no. There's nothing to be gained by becoming upset, you'd just make things worse, and you also ought to remind yourself about that and making things worse.

There's sometimes a downward spiral of annoyance. I mean, you become annoyed by one thing and it's easier to become annoyed by something else, and that makes it easier to become annoyed by yet another thing, and so on and so on. And that's just not a good way to live. So break the cycle. Take a deep breath, relax, ask yourself, what am I gonna gain by being upset? The answer is nothing. Move on. 

Craig 05:06 

If you practice reacting this way, soon it'll become second nature, and it actually will eventually become part of your being. You'll just be a person who doesn't get annoyed or upset by trivial things. 

Look, life gives us lots of opportunities to become annoyed or upset, that's just life, but you get to choose how you react. The situation provides the bait for becoming upset, but you don't have to take the bait. 

All right, that's it for this time, talk to you next time. Bye.