Getting Annoyed

I still get annoyed. The difference is that I handle it so much better than I used to.

That isn't something that simply happened with age. It came from practicing the Model: noticing my thoughts and feelings, pausing before taking action, and choosing how I want to respond.

You don't have to become a person who never feels irritated. You can learn to feel annoyance without letting it run the way you speak and behave.

The champagne was spilled. The game wasn't ruined.

I was playing rummy with two friends when one of them stood over the table to take a picture of our cards. She's artistic and takes wonderful pictures. This time, she knocked over a glass of champagne, spilling it over my cards and me.

I was annoyed. I didn't yell or say something I would regret, but the feeling was probably obvious on my face. I kept my mouth shut and gave myself a minute to process it.

My friend apologized, and within a few minutes I had moved on. Another friend noticed how quickly I went from being very annoyed to being over it. She wanted to know how I did that.

My first thoughts were dramatic: the game was ruined, she wasn't caring about the game, everything was ruined. When I noticed those thoughts, I could shift to the fact that it was an accident, we had towels, and we could wipe it up. It was no big deal.

The champagne didn't need to become an argument about how my friend should behave.

The Model doesn't require you to eliminate negative emotion

Understanding that thoughts create feelings doesn't mean you must immediately change every thought that creates an unpleasant emotion.

The Model shows you what is happening and why you feel the way you do. It doesn't automatically tell you that you shouldn't feel that way.

If someone keeps tapping a pen, I may want to feel annoyed. If I've been waiting an hour for restaurant food, I may want to feel annoyed. But I want to know that my thought is creating the feeling. It isn't the pen or the food.

Annoyance is unpleasant and usually doesn't serve us. I don't want to take action from it. But the first step is allowing the feeling, rather than treating it as something unacceptable that I have to get rid of immediately.

Start by looking back at what happened

If you get annoyed regularly, begin after the fact. Think about the last time you felt irritated, the person you often feel annoyed around, or the situation that keeps coming up.

What was the circumstance? What thought did you have about it? How did you feel, and what did you do?

Maybe you let your thoughts about the tapping pen multiply until you screamed at the person or grabbed it. Looking back lets you see the relationship between your thinking and your reaction.

As you practice witnessing yourself afterward, it becomes easier to notice yourself in the middle of the experience. Eventually, you can recognize the pattern before you create the same result again.

Allow the feeling before trying to solve it

When you resist annoyance, you may try to change the circumstance immediately so you won't have to feel it. That's when you yell at the waiter, scream in traffic, or lose control over the pen tapping.

Allowing the emotion creates space for a pause. Take a breath and stay with the feeling instead of reacting to it.

Breathing helps me witness my thoughts. Then I can identify the thought causing the annoyance.

It might be that people shouldn't tap pens, shouldn't let their children play loud games in a restaurant, or shouldn't be late. Notice how the feeling comes from that thought when the circumstance contradicts it.

You might want to keep the thought. But be clear about what it is and what it creates. Don't attribute your emotion to the other person's behavior.

You can make a request without being annoyed

On a girls' trip, I noticed myself getting irritated about people being late. I had thoughts about how they should be on time.

Instead of yelling, I took a breath and explained that being on time mattered to me, especially when we needed to catch a flight or had asked someone to meet us. We talked about it and discovered there had been a miscommunication.

I could communicate what mattered without making it a confrontation driven by annoyance.

When I think someone doesn't respect my time, I create a very different feeling than when I wonder whether they understood the time or whether something happened. Those different thoughts change how I speak to them.

Changing our thoughts changes our feelings and behavior. That changes how we show up in our relationships.

Process the emotion instead of pretending

Sometimes I take a breath but can still hear annoyance in my voice. That tells me I haven't processed it yet. Because I communicate directly, it's especially important that I work on the emotion before speaking.

I'm not good at pretending to be kind while feeling irritated. It comes out as sarcasm. I need to reach an actual feeling of acceptance or love.

I'm not recommending that you say everything is fine while seething inside. I'm recommending that you allow the feeling, find the thought, pause, and consciously choose your action.

At first, you may only understand the pattern after you've reacted. Keep practicing there. Then practice during the experience. You can learn to pause between the feeling and the action, giving yourself a choice about how you want to show up.