Recovering From A Crummy Exchange

Trust us when we say this episode is a game-changer when it comes to helping us deal with the fallout from some crummy exchange. One minute we are happy as larry plodding along through our day, not bothering anyone, when boom…the next minute someone says something to us that throws us off our whole darn day…

Good news though, help is here! We have some tips and tricks up our sleeves to help us manage our mood when the vibe is off. We can either let those things ruin our day, or we can flip that mindset, get some perspective and find some neutrality. Remember their attitude says a lot more about them than it does about you. So don't take it personally and learn how to bounce back :)

Transcript

Barb  0:02  
what people are saying to you and how they're reacting to you has way more to do with them than it does with you. And if you make it about you all the time, you're always going to be feeling things that are not necessarily have anything to do with you.

Cali  0:21  
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of clarity cafe. I'm Callie and I'm here with my clarity sister, Barb. Hey, Barb, Hey, today, we're gonna be talking about how to recover quickly after a crummy exchange with somebody else. Like sometimes you just go on your day, and get knocked out from like, just knocked off balance from somebody coming by. And I don't know, it could be a stranger, it could be a crummy exchange that way, or it could be someone you know, really well. But we're gonna talk about some ways to not take that with us for the rest of the day, week, month, year lifetime.

Barb  1:07  
Just had this great picture of like, you when you stub your toe in vert Lake is you're in a hurry, like around the corner of a bed if you're staying in a hotel, or do you know when you just do something? And then you just make that face? Like, I was just like it? Yeah, you have a crummy exchange with like a piece of furniture. Even that can really throw you off your balance. But it's worse if it's a person.

Unknown Speaker  1:28  
bird that flies by poops right on your windshield? Do you watch your car? Hey. Could you have done it before I drove through the carwash? Yeah, but

Cali  1:45  
sometimes, it's amazing how we can just be going along in our day, and then all of a sudden, something happens and it throws us off balance in our brain is just, it could be a short exchange, it could be a long, longer one, but we find ourselves struggling to recover from those exchanges. And there's a few pieces to it. So let's start with we think about what type of crummy exchange really tends to trigger us is it with the random stranger? For some of us, we might really get wrapped around the axle of X exchanges with random people being rude or observing someone being rude or not nice to other people. That can be one way that we get triggered. But then there can be other ways of wow, you know, every time my boss starts an email with as per my email. Yeah.

Barb  2:51  
Discussion,

Unknown Speaker  2:52  
Barb, I heard your phone just being there. So that tells me as per my email, and it did a it was perfectly timed. It's almost as though in clarity Cafe season five, we've upgraded to include sound effects.

Barb  3:11  
I honestly not even sure where that came from. I think it's mixed up and I make the random noises that happen in your day that are annoying.

Cali  3:19  
Yeah. And so then. All right, it could be you know, that teenager that knows just

Unknown Speaker  3:24  
how to trigger you like the right words that are the

Cali  3:30  
teenage equivalent of as per my email. That so there's different types of exchanges that each of us get, find ourselves struggling to recover our mental balance after words. So it's just fun to inventory and see where we're at could be all of the above or none of the above, there could be a very special type that sets us off balance. So Barb, for you, what are some? What are some types of exchanges that you find you don't necessarily just bounce back from?

Barb  4:08  
I saw this topic, and I was going to avoid it when we were talking about potential topics. And then I'm like, No, that means we're supposed to talk about it. There's some juice there. So thanks for helping me address this topic. Because, you know, I think we all have these things. It's part of being human right. We have little irritating things that happened to us. And I think, you know, for me is when I feel like everything's going great. I'm kind of on time I'm kind of like got my stuff to do for the day. I'm on my way somewhere. And then it's the little thing that throws me off just five minutes so now everything's off one way to deal with that as well. That was five minutes and you know, make that up at some point. And if a five minutes late the rest of the day, I'm just gonna let everybody know that. Then there's the oh, I can't believe that happened. Why did that happen? That shouldn't have happened because it happened to me. For me, you You know, there's, there's always a why me underneath that because I was doing my best, right? Oh, well you do those things, you're gonna hit that red light or there's gonna be, you know, something some construction zone when you're on your way to an appointment or you're on your way to pick up your kid from school, what are those things that kind of tends to, to flow down for so for me, I think it's the things that and it speaks a little bit to the idea of of our of our expectations we have of ourselves of all the things that we're going to be able to get done, right. And that, you know, if we had a perfect day, that would all happen. But I don't know about you, Kelly, but I can't remember when I've ever had a perfect day where everything went the way I imagined it would go in the morning, great for some things are gonna happen during the day. So, you know, the little unexpected things that throw me off a little bit that and I find that the way I come back from that is, is to find the humor in it. Hmm. So one of the fastest ways to, for me to recover from that is to think, is to find something funny about it. And usually, it's to laugh at myself, that I'm taking something like that a five minute delay, that's gonna, you know, make me potentially miss five minutes of a movie or five minutes of a yoga class, I used to have this expectation of myself, I shouldn't go if I'm going to be five minutes late. And then I realized, wait a minute, that's just hurting myself. And if I just keep going, and have a good humor about it, everything's gonna work out fine. And the time that I'm spending now, in humor is a nourishing time for myself versus a destructive time of feeling grumpy with myself. Hmm, there are physiological impact of that, even if you ever noticed how like, if you get a little grumpy about something, you don't feel as good.

Cali  6:46  
Yeah. And I think it's an interesting take on this like a crummy exchange with life and things that happens, but also yourself, like your expectations, and that's probably the art is fun to come back with. So that's hard. And I will see for me, if I think and take it a little different direction of how to quickly recover after a crummy exchange with someone else, I definitely find the humor in it too, especially in circumstances where the other person's just being ridiculous. And I tend to find humor right there in that moment, which sometimes it's helpful for the other person. And sometimes they're super offended at that. And honestly, I'm amused either way, so. But I think the one that I've struggled with over the years, and it's gotten much better, as I've, you know, practiced more of my tools, and you know, the guided visualizations of separations and not taking things. So personally, and like all of that work has really helped this. But I do want to say that one of the themes when I was younger, that triggered me so quickly, was when someone came at me with something that I interpreted as I'm a bad person. It's one thing if somebody like on the street, or in a coffee shop, or whatever, it's just like, blah, and they're just like, you don't know me, you don't know anything about me. So whatever you think is clearly more about you than me. But when I was younger, and I would be in a work situation, for example, where they may not even have been implying this, but like they imply that I wasn't living up to expectations of you know, or that I did something that I had interpreted as affecting my credit, not credibility as a person. But I had a lot of self esteem wrapped up in making sure that people saw me as someone who had credibility. And so if they said something that I had interpreted as not credible, which since it was such a big sensitive, sore topic for me for so many years, it was easy for somebody to say something that fell in that bucket because the bucket was big. But it would take me some time to shake it off. And so I want to talk a little bit about that experience, and some things that I would do to shake it off. And for those of you out there, that's just an example, you may have one like that, or you may have something else that you're like, Wow, that is like a number one direct path towards me getting triggered and then I'm struggling to shake it off. So just be present with yourself as you're listening to this. And as things come up and see what comes up for you. So when that would happen, or let's just say when an experience that one is struggling to shake off. The first thing that I do is I put up a little separation, a little boundary. And for those of you who are like how do I do that? How do I find my magic bubble? My boundary? We have an app limitless guided visualizations and in that app are these little mindset microdoses and you can go in there and And there's one called boundaries, and one called separations and neutrality. So all those things I'm going to reference, those tools are in there, and it's free. And so you can just go and learn those little tools, and they can be done on the fly super helpful. But for those you just listening now, I like to just first recognize what's in their space or their side of the street and what's in mine. So when someone comes up with something that's triggering, I try to just acknowledge that I'm having feels and close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath and say, okay, so what is it that they're trying to get out of this exchange? Or what is it that they need? Or what is it that was probably at the heart of what they're trying to say? Even though their words may not have been that? What is it that they're trying to communicate? And sometimes I can go straight out that and find that, but sometimes I'm so triggered, I have to say, What am I feeling right now? And where does that come from? Because likely, if it's a trigger, it's from the past. It's not from this moment, right? It's something that happened before. And this moment is just a way for me to have an opportunity to clear it.

So first step is inventory, right? I have been talking about this, we inventory, we say, What am I feeling? Where does that come from? And what is the heart of what they're trying to say? And that gives some space, some separation between me and between them and the communication, so I don't have to be so riled about it. Bob Woodson, things that you do when you find yourself in an exchange, or having had one, and you walk away, and your brains just really going at it, you're like, okay, at some point, I need to put this puzzle down, what are some tools that you use?

Barb  11:52  
Yeah, so good, I was just thinking about all of those times when, when I've had those the same situation where I found myself being tripped, being triggered, and needing to make those separations. And for me, I go back to something that a very wise woman said to me many years ago, which is, what people are saying to you, and how they're reacting to you has way more to do with them than it does with you. And if you make it about you all the time, you're always going to be feeling things that are not necessarily have anything to do with you. Because you're kind of making up a story. So, you know, part of it is I think, as even as we in our early childhood development, you know, we're starting to figure out who we are, and we interpret the world as being all about us. So, I found it really liberating to realize like, oh, people are just gonna be, they're gonna be, that's how they are because of what's happened to them in their lives. And all I can do is try to be me, the most best version of BB that I can be at this moment. And so just being able to come back and another way, I think of what you were saying, Kelly of being able to make those separations, be in my bubble. And, you know, if there's something in there that doesn't feel like me, just let it go down at ground in court, just wow, is that me, is that 35 year old BB, or is that five year old BB. And I even sometimes will have a visual flash of like, if I take a quick inventory. I just, I can remember, like, I was very, very introverted. When I was younger, I had to learn to be outgoing, which is interesting, because I think most people think of me as a very outgoing person. And I love being with people. And I get so much out of social interactions. But I read this memory of hiding behind my mother's skirt. Like it was a hot day. And I remember, like literally putting her skirt in front of my face and thinking that that no one could see me. So I was visually trying to make a protective bubble around myself, and being able to realize, like, oh, it's safe for me to be in the world. Because I always have this bubble. And the way people are going to be is how they're going to be. And I don't want to have to always be a victim of whatever's going on with them. That could be present and try to understand, but really, it's all about how I'm reacting to their input and letting them have their their feelings and me have my feelings and my truth.

Cali  14:30  
Yeah, and I'm going to add one more tool to this quick recovery. So one thing to do is just find like you maybe need to go outside and take a little walk and have a seat, you know, just kind of physically shake it off, who might have a little moment 62nd Dance Party, whatever you need to do to just move past that. But then also, maybe go find a place to take a break. If you're working go in the bathroom, sit down, go outside, sit down. Don't close your eyes and imagine the feeling that you're feeling. And imagine all of that kind of just getting absorbed into a big marble or big bubble, create a bubble, let it be like a vacuum and just take that feeling out of your body, and do that bubble and let it fill, and then move it out from your space. Imagine that bubble just going out. And go ha, look at all of that, that's come up. And you can see what comes up for you what thoughts might be sort of unleashed as you start to look at that, or memories or whatever special way that your body being communicates to you. But look at that bubble, send it out, and then just let it pop just like a little bubble. What if you blow a bubble pop, and you might have a whole bunch. So you might want to imagine like blowing bubbles in there, like pop up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. But getting that up and out of the body so that you can recover and get your information because when we're really charged, it's hard to get clarity. So just by that simple technique of just blowing bubbles and just blow that out of your space, pop up a pop, and then allowing yourself to reset, having let go of all of that. Yeah, that's a simple one, blah, blah, boss.

Barb  16:31  
I love that my favorite boss of all time was a wonderful man. And he would tell me, we get done with like a frustrating meeting. And we knew there was going to be some lot a lot of work associated with what it just happened. And we're like, ah, and then he would just say, Barb, just put it all in a big bubble and let it float away. And I love it. I love the visualization of the bubble, because it has that lightness, right. So it takes all the heaviness off of those feelings that are kind of dragging you down. And as you talked about getting that out of your space, I was thinking in Qigong, for instance, we have all kinds of exercises we call it where you where you like shake, you shake your whole body, you shake your arms, you shake your legs, you know, this is assuming you can get somewhere where you know, you feel comfortable doing that, like just walk outside and just standing, Shake your arms, shake your hands, shake your hips, and just let all that stuff you've been holding because a lot of times when you're feeling a little triggered your body gets very tense. So just by the physical release of that shaking, you can kind of let those feelings flow out. And you can do the same with sound. You know, sometimes you walk out of a meeting you walk into another room you just go Huh Well, it turns out in Chicago that's a sound for releasing the feelings of upset in the heart, which is like the Emperor Empress of the body, mind and spirit. So just, you know, making a sound who make a sound like Ha, and just letting that go. Any physical things like that are very helpful to help pull the those charges out.

Cali  18:08  
Mm hmm. I love it. We got a little Qigong I got Allah visualizations, we got something for everybody or all of the above, depending on how much you need to shake off. So thank you everybody, for sharing in this experience with us. This clarity Cafe family has just been so wonderful, you know, we Barb and I, we we started this to set out and change the conversations that were happening online on social and just start to be present for how we want to relate to each other. There's so much attention out there in the world about how disappointing it can be how we are treating each other and ourselves. That we wanted to just be present for shifting that conversation and being present for ourselves and treating each other with that same love and respect. So thank you, all of you for being a part of that. And if you find something that's working in these podcasts for you are little tips or tricks, share them with people around you. We're here to start a conversation, change the conversation. And you know, it's always fun to have new and different things to talk about. Besides how the world's not working. Doesn't mean we don't acknowledge that there's a lot out there. But balance is super important so that we can make change. So always take what works, leave what doesn't and share what it is and until next time, be well

Barb  19:43  
you will