Are You Slamming Doors?

There's a saying that says "Disrespect closes doors that apologies can't reopen". When we are walking through a difficult time it's easy to fall into a pattern of anger and reacting with disrespect. While this is understandable it's not to your benefit. Let's create a culture of respect within ourselves. It's time to stop slamming doors.

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This is the podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I am using that word rebuild because we're specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

Now, I know I say this every time, but just in case somebody's new tuning in, I want to explain what does it mean to start over in the middle of their life. Well, for me, what that looked like as an example, was divorce after 20 year marriage.

That felt like I was starting over. But for my sister, what did that look like for her? That looked like the very unexpected death of her spouse.

And while those are two very different things, and I'm not comparing them, the commonality is when all your hopes, all your dreams, all your plans for the future have gone up in smoke. Your day-to-day life looks totally different.

And it does, it feels like you're starting over. If that's you, from the bottom of my heart, let me just say, I truly am so sorry. I know how horrible and itchy and overwhelming that feels, but I'm here to offer hope.

I'm here to offer encouragement. Countless women have gone through this, and they've come out on the other side better for it. And that's why we're here.

We're going to talk about what to focus on, what to do, different ways, little steps, tiny things here and there to rebuild a really amazing life. You are not alone. You're actually in the right place, so welcome.

I'm so, so glad you're here. So let's get down to today's episode. If you'll remember in the beginning, I said I focused on five areas when I rebuilt my life.

I focused on my spiritual health. I focused on my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and growth and goals. So today's episode is going to fall under growth, but it also falls under mental health.

I feel like it's a little bit of both. And what we're going to talk about is a lot of times when you go through a major change, a major transition, especially one that you didn't ask for, your life is topsy-turvy.

One of the reactions to that is anger. And a lot of times, in this process, you can find your voice, and that's really good to find your voice.

If you finally are speaking up for yourself, you're standing up for yourself, you're telling people how it is, you're finally standing up and speaking out.

However, sometimes, what I have observed is you've found your voice, but maybe we need to adjust the volume. I include myself in this category, because I went through this. I finally found my voice, which sounds really positive, right?

We need to, like, she's found her voice. We hear a lot of things in our society that really celebrates the idea and the concept of finding your voice.

However, we need to adjust the volume, and nobody talks about that, because oftentimes, when somebody finds their voice, the volume is set on high, like it's blasting people's eardrums out. What does that mean? What do I mean by that?

What does it look like? That means that sometimes when you find your voice, you're extremely angry and confrontational. You're very caustic, quick to anger.

Everything frustrates you, and you're so frustrated that you finally are speaking up for yourself. I get it. I've been through that.

If you're in that season, as you go through the grief process of your life being so different and everything, that anger stage, that's natural. I'm not telling you you're wrong for going through that. Please don't misunderstand.

But what I want to say is let's acknowledge it and move through it as quick as we can. Does that make sense? Why?

Why? Because disrespect will close doors that apologies can't reopen. I love that saying, and it just resonated with me really, really, really strongly.

And I think we need to be reminded of that when we go through this season of transition and change, and we're finally able to speak up for ourselves and we're finally able to tell people how it is. But let's adjust that volume. We found our voice.

Now, let's adjust that volume, because disrespect really does close doors, that apologies can't reopen. And I've watched that. I've watched women go through divorce.

I've watched several friends go through divorce, and I've seen that anger phase in other people, and I've seen it myself. And that's why I know it's very, very common. But I've seen people pop off and be disrespectful.

I've seen... I've literally seen where they were disrespectful to somebody who had the resources, the connections, the ability to help them out. But because of that disrespect, they didn't get any of that help or resources.

And it could have been a tremendous difference in their life. I've watched this multiple times. Multiple times.

I have so many examples. So I know how true this is. And I know how easy it is to fall into the pattern of that knee-jerk anger response when something happens.

You're already overwhelmed. You're maxed out. There's so many emotions going along.

There's so much responsibility. All the bills are on you now. Getting the kids back and forth to where they go or what they're going to do, all is on you now.

Everything, work, all of it. That maintenance, if something breaks down, it's on you. Every single thing falls on you.

And it shouldn't be that way. And you're so aggravated, and you're so angry. And how dare this person cut you off in traffic?

How dare that person be, snub you? How dare this person do that, or the other person do the other? And you pop off.

And in the moment, it feels good. It feels good to let them know how you feel, how wrong they were to treat you that way. But in the long run, in the long run, disrespect slams doors.

I don't want you going through life slamming doors. I don't want to go through life slamming doors. And I know that when you treat people disrespectfully, it slams doors.

It truly, truly does. We cut off avenues of help. And this is a time we need help a lot, right?

This is a time where we need other people. I'm encouraging you because I know how hard it is. I know how easy it is to fall into that.

Ooh, it feels so good just to say what I finally feel. I understand that. And I'm encouraging you to go ahead and move through the season quickly, not to get stuck in that anger season, because it only benefits you.

Yes, it benefits the people around you, but it benefits you. So how do you stop that? How do you stop that knee jerk response when somebody's done something and you are already maxed out at your limit emotionally?

You have no more emotional bandwidth. And somebody says or does something so rude, how do you stop yourself from spouting off, especially when it's kind of become a habit? Well, this is what I did.

I made myself wait 24 hours before I responded. So I practiced the pause, so to speak. I could still respond.

I still had a voice. I still got to speak my voice. I didn't tell myself I couldn't respond.

I told myself to wait to respond. Why? Because waiting acted like a sifting process.

I sifted through these things I was angry with. So sometimes somebody maybe did something that made me feel aggravated in the moment. But after 24 hours, you realize, you know, that really wasn't that big of a deal.

That wasn't anything. It didn't deserve a response. You kind of under, okay, whatever.

Sometimes something still needed a response. Something happened. It was really, I have a voice.

I get to stand up for myself. But when I did wait 24 hours, then I could respond respectfully. Then I wasn't responding clouded by emotion, and I could articulate myself much more clearly.

What I realized as I started learning to wait and wait to respond when I was emotionally triggered, if I would make myself wait, people listened to me when I responded in a respectful way.

When I responded, when I popped off emotionally, people were not as likely to listen to me. Why is that? Because when you respond in anger, in emotion, the person who's listening to you feels very defensive.

So they're not listening to the content of what you're saying. They're listening in a defensive manner, trying to defend themselves against your anger, the emotion they feel come in their way.

When your emotion dissipates, and you can, I mean, still you may have been slighted, something may have happened. I'll use the example, my ex-husband did something that really ticked me off. I still needed to address it in 24 hours.

It was something that needed to be addressed. But after 24 hours, I had calmed down, and I could respectfully state the reason why I disagreed with what had happened.

And that then opened a communication between two people instead of throwing gasoline on a fire. Throwing gasoline on the fire was me popping right back off. I can't believe you did that.

That just burns things down, right? But when you can pause and then respond respectfully, then that opens up communication. And maybe, potentially, something can actually happen.

You can maybe have a positive outcome. Who knows? Maybe not.

It's not guaranteed. But you're much more likely to get a positive outcome when you're not clouded by emotion, and you respond and articulate yourself respectfully. I know that this isn't easy.

I struggled with this. I truly did. I know how easy it is to pop off at all kinds of things.

And like I said, I watched so many women. I remember there was a mom, and she would get angry at everything. She was frustrated at everything.

And then I realized she was going through a divorce, and I thought, oh, that makes sense. That makes sense, right? I got it.

I've watched people get stuck in this anger phase, and it doesn't help them. It really doesn't. It didn't help me be unstuck there.

I needed to move through that, move, get past that, and be able to control myself. When you bring respect to the table, it doesn't mean that the person you're interacting with will bring respect to the table, too.

Sometimes, the other person brings disrespect, but your actions and your response shouldn't be dictated by that other person. You set how you will respond.

And just because somebody treats you with disrespect doesn't mean that you get to respond with disrespect. If you are building an amazing life, you want to have a life where internally, you set a culture of respect.

That's a much more peaceful and calm internal culture to cultivate in yourself. When you respond in respect, that's much, much more peaceful.

And as we want to build an amazing life, these are some of the key essential building blocks to an amazing life. An internal culture of respect does not mean the other person is going to interact with respect. Sometimes it does.

Sometimes when you set a respectful tone, the other person reciprocates with a respectful tone back. But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes you set a respectful tone, and it's just disrespect thrown back at you.

And that's when it's really hard. And that's when we have to practice the pause. The more emotional we get, the more we need to pause, okay?

And over time, it gets easier. I promise it does. In the beginning, it's hard.

And so what do you do in the beginning? Well, in the beginning, when it's hard to practice the pause, what I did, I would go ahead and type out that text message, that response, that, I can't believe you did this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I would just let it out, and then I would delete it. But at least I got to let it out. I didn't send it, but I got to put all the words down.

I got to get it out of my system a little bit. So, but I would still wait to respond. I didn't hit send until 24 hours when I could respond respectfully.

Being respectful isn't about the other person. Being respectful is 100% about you. It's about your character.

It's about who you want to be, and the life you want to build. It's about living a life of peace and joy, and not a life of anger.

When we're set off so easily, which is completely understandable, but when the car that cuts us off, or the person who isn't even thinking about what they're doing does something that offends us, when so many little external factors set us off, that

is not a life of peace. That is not an amazing life. When somebody else can dictate our emotional day, that is not an amazing life. We have to set the tone.

And this is one way where we set the tone, that we say, I will operate under a character of respect. That's my character, that's who I am. I can't say who you are, but I will respond with respect.

And even if you come back at me with disrespect, I'm going to hold true to my character, because I care about creating an amazing life. I am working on building something so much bigger.

And for me to do that, I have to create a culture in myself of respect, because that culture of respect leads to a culture of peace, leads to a culture where I'm in control of what bothers me.

And it takes time, especially if you're in the height of that really angry phase and everything irritates you, it takes time to unwind yourself from that.

And it's really easy to get so wound up, but the more you practice the pause, the more you practice waiting to respond, the more you wait before you pop off. You tell yourself, you can do it, but you've got to wait 24 hours.

No, the more you wait, the more you're creating an atmosphere of calm and peace in your life. The more you are learning to say, the outside doesn't affect the inside. I control the inside.

I control who I am. I control my emotions, and the outside doesn't affect them. That is how you build an amazing life.

That's how you stay in control of you, by not letting all these things affect you. And it's hard. It's so hard, especially in the height of everything going wrong.

But I promise you, you can do it. I promise you, the more you practice the pause, the more you wait to respond, the more natural it becomes over time.

And then suddenly, you realize somebody does something that irritates you, and you just wait because you know that's what you're supposed to do. Like you're training yourself.

You wait, and the little things stop bothering you as much, because you know in 24 hours, you're not going to care about that, that it wasn't that big of a deal.

You begin to pick up on it more quickly, and the small things, like somebody cutting you off in traffic, or somebody being maybe insensitive and not thinking at work, or whatever, once you've practiced the pause several times, you begin to realize,

yeah, that's not going to bother me anymore in 24 hours. I'm just ticked in the moment, and you get through it so much quicker. When you create a culture of calmness and peace within yourself, and that's so important.

I don't want you to go through life slamming doors. I don't want you to get stuck in the anger phase, where you slam all the doors. Because those are opportunities, you don't know which door you need to walk through.

You obviously don't. Two years down the road, there could be a door there that would have been so beneficial to you. But you slammed it.

In a moment of anger, in words of disrespect, you closed a door that you really, really need to open. I don't want that for you, I don't want that for me. I want us to practice the pause and create a culture of respect.

Because we are people worthy of respect. We want a life of calm, we want a life of peace, and we're going to cultivate that within ourselves. We're not going to depend on the outside world and other people to bring it to us.

We're going to create and cultivate it within ourselves. And that doesn't mean that the outside world is always going to reflect that just because we created it within ourselves.

But when we create it within ourselves, we control what we create in ourselves.

And we can control that environment, and we can practice that pause, and we can learn to live a life of peace and not be blown about by all the waves and the emotions and the different things that are external.

And we can set our course on a much calmer, internal peace. We can say, I'm not going to slam that door.

I'm going to keep all the doors open, because I don't know which door on this hallway I'm going to walk down, because when we're in a season of transition, we're often in a hallway, are we not? We don't really know what path we're going to take.

Everything is topsy turvy. We don't know which, where we're going to go, where we're going to end up. Things are still in flux.

You are in a hallway. You don't know what doors you are going to need open. Don't slam them shut.

Don't. Give yourself every opportunity, because there are doors you're going to need to walk through. There are people in your life that have doors that you need to walk through.

They have resources, they have connections, they have influence, and you don't even know it. You don't see it. I don't see it.

But hindsight is 20-20, and don't, in hindsight, be like, dang it, I sling in that door and I shouldn't have. To the best of our ability, let's walk in respect, because at the end of the day, we're the one who benefits from that.

We benefit from a culture of respect internally. I would love to hear from you. If you're struggling with anger, I totally get it.

If you need to vent to somebody, I would love to hear from you. I can be the person you vent to. Sometimes we just need another person to talk to, like, ah, this is so hard.

You can find me online, www.workingonamazing.com. There's a comment box. Drop me a line, I'll respond.

You can find me on social media. I'm on most social media platforms, but I will say, I do hang out on Facebook the most. But you can send me a message on Messenger.

I'm working on Amazing. It's just a page. Connect with me.

Let me connect with you. Let's connect with a group. You are not alone.

We can do this together, all right? Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to talking to you next time.

Bye.