Is my mindset a result of the event or my thinking about the event? I can change my thinking and set a positive mindset.
Chloe heard her husband open the garage door. She glanced at the clock.
“Oh good, he’s just come home from work. He’ll see the clean garage. I’m sure he’ll be pleased.” It had taken her two hours to clean and put everything away. She heard the garage door closing as she turned off the stove and finished the dinner preparations.
Jack got out of the car and looked at the area around his work bench. Then he looked at the workbench. The project he’d been working on wasn’t in sight. And all his tools were put away, somewhere. By the time he got to the door into the house, he was fuming. Things at work had been bad enough, but this was the last straw.
He looked at his beaming wife. He was mad. “What possessed you to invade my work bench and mess up the project I was working on? Where did you put the pieces of it? And where are the tools I was using? He was angrily yelling at her. “You had no business getting into my things.”
Her smile had quickly dissolved. She backed up. “I was just trying to help. I thought having a clean work bench would please you. It didn’t look like you were working on a project. The pieces are in a bag in the top of the trash bin. And you’ll find your tools in the tool box in their regular places.”
Turning on his heal, Jack went back through the door into the garage, slamming it in anger. Chloe, on the verge of tears, stepped quickly to the coat closet, grabbed her jacket and plucked her keys off the key holder before going out the front door. She jogged to the park three blocks away, tears flowing. “This was the third time this week he’d yelled at her,” she thought. “What was going on?”
When these overwhelming emotional events happen, it’s an unpleasant or difficult to deal with experience. So, it’s normal to escape them. You run to your room or out the door to get away from the negative person or experience, like Chloe did. You want to escape your feelings of anger, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, frustration, disappointment, anxiety, and/or vulnerability.
But it’s far better for your mental health to take positive actions instead of ignoring, suppressing or escaping negative events with their feelings and emotions. There are a number of things you can do:
- Journal about those feelings. Take a few minutes and write everything you feel at that moment. Get it all out on paper. Then reread it and add anything you may have left out and still need to express. Now read the entire entry again, slowly. Read it a third time and underline what’s a fact and circle what’s an opinion based on your thinking about events.
- Ponder these two questions and answer honestly. Write down your answer along with what you realized. Ask, “Is there another way to look at this or these event(s), one with a different interpretation?” –like knowing what your partner is dealing with that he or she suppressed. “Did the actual event cause the feelings pain I’m enduring, or is it my thinking about the event that’s causing my emotional pain?”
- Meditate and pray. As you meditate and focus on your breath for about five minutes, you calm the mind so it can review the experience with renewed clarity. With a fresh pair of eyes, write your new thinking about the event. Read the new recital and see if it’s closer to the facts you previously underlined. Pray for additional insight from God. Write down any intuitive thoughts you receive. You may get additional information or simply a confirmation of your new thoughts that they are correct.
- Talk to a trusted friend. If you still have negative feelings or don’t understand something, talk to the one personal friend you totally trust to get their insights. Read what you’ve written and ask your questions. Listen carefully and be prepared to receive intuitive answers from God along with the friend’s comments.
- Finally, write down the new things you learned, the blessings you just received and express your gratitude for the tender mercies God has delivered to you as a result of learning how to change your mindset when feelings and emotions threaten to overwhelm you.
You now have a proactive way to deal with negative feelings and emotions that cascade down on you when relationships turn to arguments or angry disagreements. So, when negative events destroy your serenity and peace, stop, smile and run through this five step process and reclaim your joy and peace.