Choosing Calm - Peace Series

Hey family, welcome back to Karolyn Cares. 

Where we talk about community, compassion and commerce in real time. I'm your host Karolyn.

This is part 4 and the final episode of the Peace Series. 

Last episode we talked about Emotional Maturity… versus Emotional Drama.

Today we’re talking about Choosing Calm.

We want to go out with a bang in this series and gain back control of your life. This is just the beginning and we're winning. Let's go!!!

If this episode or any of our previous episodes has met you where you are, or if you know someone who can benefit from this episode, would you please like, subscribe, and share this with those who need it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey family, welcome back to Carolyn Cares, where we talk about compassion, community, and commerce in real time. This is the final episode of the Peace Series. Today we're talking about choosing calm over chaos. Why we default to chaos. Sometimes it could be familiar patterns, sometimes it could be emotional habits, and sometimes it could be the environment. If you have been accustomed to, you know, doing something always in the same way, the same routine. It's hard to break a pattern for someone. And sometimes people don't want to break break patterns. They want to do things just like, you know, just like their future generations or the future, not the future, I'm sorry, the previous generations. And sometimes it may not, it may not work. It simply won't work. There are emotional habits that we are so familiar with and we hold near and dear. These are emotional habits, and we just default to chaos because it's an emotional habit. It's the environment. Maybe you've grown up in an abusive, chaotic home where there was no order or structure. Everyone kind of did it, did as they pleased. And then as you became an adult, it was hard for you to hone it in. It's hard for you to, you know, remain disciplined or to be become disciplined simply for that environment that you were raised in. You know, it could be an environment where there can be the opposite, where it was highly structured, highly structured, where it was, you couldn't, you know, you couldn't detour off the your individual path. It had to be a certain way at a certain time in a certain method. And I get that to an extent, but sometimes it becomes so rigid that people, you know, become unhappy because they can't flow in any type of you know free-thinking, you know, creative juices because of the structure. It's so structured and so rigid. I like to call it rigid. What does calm look like though? So if we if we're dealing, if our default is chaos, what does calm look like? So calm deals with slower responses. You're not so quick to respond. You're not so quick to respond. You give yourself a moment, just pause. Okay, now I would normally just say it and let the chips fall where they may, or I'm gonna think about this before I let someone know, before I express myself. Let me just let me give me a moment. So you have slower responses where calm, what calm looks like, slower responses, there's clear decisions, you have clarity, you have understanding foremost, you have understanding so you get where the other person is. Someone made a comment about this years ago, and I love this, I love this illustration. When you have understanding, you're all you are standing under somebody. So you're standing under their point of view, how they see things, their perspective, their feelings, their opinion, you are standing under them. So that's a good way of under of defining understanding when you're standing under someone. So calm, again, slower responses, clear decisions, and then here's a great one: less noise. When you're responding in a calm way, there's less noise. You're not just yapping, and the volume just goes up, you're yapping, yapping, yapping, yapping, the volume goes up, and then you're just quiet. There's less noise, there's less stress strain, there's less uh stress strain or drama involved. Calm is not boring, it's stable. Let me say that again. Calm is not boring, it's stable. I don't like to be around someone who is always drama-filled. I mean, you got drama going on all the time. If it's not drama personally, it's drama professionally, you got drama going on at church, you got drama going on in the workplace, you got drama going on in the home, you got drama going on when you go to uh uh an event. But here's the here's the catcher. You are the common denominator. It's you, it's not the other person. You are the common denominator in all of this. If you find yourself in drama-filled scenarios, ask yourself, am I the common denominator? Am I drumming up this drama? Am I inviting this drama wherever I go? So it's not all, it's not, it's not other people. You gotta look within yourself and say, hey, am I bringing this drama into situations wherever I go? So here's how you choose calm daily by saying no. Okay, say that with me. Saying no in O. Period. Period point blank. Saying no. Here's another way that you choose calm on a daily basis, not engaging. Don't engage with someone that likes drama and you you liked drama, you used to like drama because you're working on yourself. You used to like drama. Don't engage. The Bible says that where the fire, the fire, I'm not saying this verbatim, it's almost like strife. There's no strife where there's no exchange of words. There's no strife. So if you're trying to get me into a strife, a strife, strifing situation, but I'm not engaging with you, I'm not going tit for tat, I'm not throwing out jabs just like you're throwing out jabs. There's nothing to benefit. The other person is not benefiting because you're not giving them what they're what they want. You're not giving them the ammunition that they need to fire back on you. You're just choosing calm over trauma. So again, choosing calm daily includes saying no, not engaging, and leaving situations. If you need to pick up, walk out the door, remove yourself, step out of the way, go to another area, do it, do it for the sake of peace, for the sake of calmness. Leave the situation, just leave it. You know, this is not serving me. Let me let me remove myself, or I'm not participating in this conversation, I'm not participating in this conversation, or I don't have anything to say in this conversation. I don't have anything to say in this conversation, and just leave it, leave it alone. So if you need to physically leave a room, do it, but if you can't do it, then leave the conversation altogether. Don't engage, don't add to the conversation, just be quiet. There's an eternal, internal, not an eternal, an internal shift that takes place because calm is a decision you make repeatedly, it's not a one and done deal. You don't remain calm one time and then you become the going-off chick or the going-off guy, you know, that everybody knows you by. No, you have to repeatedly make this a decision. Calm is your decision, but calm, look at it in a positive way. Calm is your peace. You can find peace in being calm. Others will find you being a peaceful person, and guess what? Calm attracts the right people. It repels people when they see that you're a drama king or drama queen, they don't want to be around you. Notice that. Notice if you're if your life has previously been marked by drama-filled conversation scenarios. People will go the opposite direction when they see you. Because they're thinking, oh my goodness, here they are bringing drama. Because they know that what you're going to say or what you're going to do is always drama-filled. You're filled with drama. You don't like it to be quiet at all. Sometimes you just need to sit in your quietness and be quiet. Be still. Be still. Be quiet. And you don't have to say anything. It's okay to be quiet. And I'm meaning not saying anything. It's okay. Don't let people make you feel uncomfortable because you have nothing to say in a conversation or in a manner that people would typically expect you to react. Don't do it. Calm is a decision you make repeatedly. Here's homework. I want you to identify one chaotic pattern that you may have or that you're working on, you know, and just jot it down. Identify it. Because the only way that you're going to get help is that you got to come clean and you got to identify what it is that you're dealing with. Secondly, I want you to replace this chaotic pattern with a calm response. Okay. So let's say you and you and a sibling don't get along. And whenever you come into a room, there's drama, there's chaos, there's you're not someone is someone, one person or both persons aren't practicing emotional intelligence. And people don't like to be around you. Your other family members are like, oh, here we go again. They want to keep you separate, or people don't want to deal with you, period, because they know that you bring trauma. You love trauma because again, there's a tension, attention that you're getting from this. There is a payment, shall I say, that you're receiving from being uh chaotic, from being drama-filled. So in the homework, again, you're going to identify one chaotic pattern, jot it down on those journals. And again, if you haven't listened to my previous series, silent series, as well as the closing of our peace series today, I am a proponent of journals. I mean journals that you can write to your heart's content of what you're dealing with for the day, of the things that you're grateful for, of the things that you need assistance in, of the things that you're working on. I believe in journals, and I believe a journal is a very telling instrument that will reveal to you who you are, who you really are. Not just the people, person that people see every day, but the person that you're really dealing with inwardly. A journal is for you to jot down your inward thoughts and feelings and to be okay with it. So again, identify that one chaotic pattern, write it down in your journal, replace that pattern with a calm response, and again, you're just going to write it in your journal. You're gonna you're gonna journal the results, and you're going to collect and find out, let you, you know, look at this later on to see where you are in your life regarding this. Where in your life do you need more calm? That's my question to you. Where in your life do you need more calm? Is it in your private life, personal life? Is it in your public life, your work life? Is it in your church life? Is it in your if you're an entrepreneur, is you in your entrepreneurial life? Where do you need more calm? Jot it down. Jot it down where do you need more more calm in dealing with your family, your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your neighbors. Some people have a contentious relationship with their neighbors, and you know, they are okay with it. They love drama among themselves and their neighbors. The actual person that lives, you know, down the street from your beside your home, and you have been in battle with that neighbor for the longest time. Get rid of that drama, you all. Life is too short. Life is too precious for you to hold on to a drama-filled situation. I want to share this story because it comes to my mind and it was a very sad story. When I first saw it, saw it, I was heartbroken. There was a couple of a few years back, it might have been during COVID, the start of COVID, if my memory serves me right. It was a family, a husband and wife, that were, it had snowed. I think it was in Pennsylvania. I may be incorrect, but I believe it was in Pennsylvania. And it had snowed in the neighborhood. So the husband and wife were out shoveling, and their neighbor across the street, he was shoveling. And the couple was fussing and cussing because they said that their neighbor had blocked their driveway with him shoveling snow. So they got into a spat with their neighbor. I don't know whether, you know, the couple and the neighbor have had spats before. I don't, I'm not sure. The story didn't say. Well, anyhow, that the wife started spouting out to the neighbor across the street. She was blaming him for, you know, filling their driveway with snow from his yard. And the neighbor, you know, was trying to explain to them, hey, it's not me, you know, I'm clearing out my area too, but you're you're blaming me for this result. So long story short, they kept going back and forth, back and forth. And then the the woman said something clearly, I mean, just it was just crass. She said something crass to the neighbor, and her husband, you know, came out the door and he was saying stuff to the neighbor. So they were just saying really crass things to the neighbor. And the neighbor looked like a timid guy, you know, if, you know, based on what you could tell initially. He seemed kind of timid. But what that woman said, the wife said to the neighbor, I mean, it just triggered him. So the neighbor said, wait here, I got something for you. So the woman's just like, yeah, you go ahead and bring out, you know, go ahead and do whatever, whatever. And she just kept going for it. She was cussing the man out, saying profanities and some crass things. So that neighbor went in the house, and I kid you not, he came out with a, I think it was a rifle. I don't think it was a gun. It was a rifle. And the woman was just, you know, just yapping it up, just talking to the neighbor, still running her mouth, her husband. And that neighbor went to that woman with the rifle and shot her point blank. I didn't, they didn't show him shooting her, but you could hear it. And that woman was talking, and you can tell that she was trying to, she was cut cursing that man while you could hear her curdling in her blood. So whatever, wherever he shot her at, she was, she was trying to say, still get the word out while she's drowning in her blood. She's trying to talk it in her blood, and finally the neighbor just, I mean, just went to her. He said, Go and say it again. Go and say what you said again. And bam, he he shot her again, shot the woman dead, and the husband, the husband, no, no, I think she shot the husband first, and then the wife started screaming, and she was, you know, yelling at the guy, and the guy just went up to her and just on me, just killed her. And again, she was curdling in her blood. You could hear that blood curdling scream, but also you could hear her, I mean, drowning in her blood. She was trying to talk, and I guess wherever he shot her at, blood was coming up. And you could hear she was trying to say something, but you could hear it was being drowned out by blood. So that neighbor was not practicing emotional intelligence. He killed that couple. He killed that couple, but then he went in, and I guess he realized what he had done. He then, you know, shot himself. So there were three people dead by the time the police, you know, came. But that neighbor who who, you know, was not practicing emotional intelligence, his response to his neighbor was not good. And he realized that he had, you know, committed a final decision. He had made a decision that he could not undo. He then, you know, unalived himself. And it was so heartbreaking to hear the story behind this couple, you know, how this couple lost their lives unnecessarily, you know, due to an altercation with their neighbor across the street over snow. When had the situation, you know, someone thought about it, you know, the the wife could have just kept her mouth shut, or she could have approached the neighbor in a different way and said, hey, you know, we noticed that while we're cleaning this, you know, our yard out, you know, we're getting more snow. Is that you doing that? You know, can you put it out in another direction as opposed to filling our street, you know, our side of the street up? And that neighbor could have responded in a better way by saying, okay, yeah. Okay, I see what you're saying. Let me let me change the direction of where I'm taking this snow out. So, again, a very, very heartbreaking situation, a very sad situation. And again, they weren't practicing calm at all, neither, neither aside. They were practicing calm. They got in their emotions. In my closing, I want you to know that this one matters most. That peace is not something you find. It's something you choose. You choose it in your silence. You choose it in your boundaries, you choose it in your decisions, and in your response. Thank you for being here with me. Until next time, care for yourself, protect your peace, and choose calm. And let me just say this finally: if this episode resonated with you and you or you know somebody where this episode can be of help, please like, comment, and share. And until next time, thank you for being here with Carolyn Cares. Goodbye.