I have days when I’ve little energy.
Sometimes I’m more concerned with finding the reason than with how I deal with the situation.
When I’m low on energy, my mood is bad and my patience is limited.
I can easily smell my low energy, it starts first thing in the morning with a lack of patience with my daughter.
I find myself getting angry because she doesn’t eat her breakfast on time. It happens every day anyway, today is nothing special.
In other words, these days I’m easily triggered.
At home, at work, everywhere.
I’ve learned to deal with my triggers by following these steps:
- Identify the behavior that triggers me
- Look at the thoughts, feelings, body sensations and actions
- Look at the impact
- Create a new practice
I did this exercise last week, looking at what happens to me when my daughter insists on something, and it was gold! I thought I already knew how to handle it, and surprise! I clarified how I want to respond to her instead of reacting, how I want to focus on her frustration and not on me and my trigger of “she does not hear me”. What difference does that make? When that happens, I remember the exercise I did and focus on listening to her and dealing with her frustration.
In the Creation of Insights workshop, Becca and I look with participants at behaviors at work that trigger them, responding vs reacting and we walk them through the steps I mentioned.
If you lead a team and want to explore this topic, check out our next workshop in May here. It’s free of charge.
