Ask Yourself Why

Do you get angry? Frustrated? Annoyed? I am sure you do at times, as we all do. This week I did an experiment. Any time I got angry, frustrated or annoyed I stopped to ask myself why. Why was I annoyed? Was it because I didn’t do as well as I thought I had, was it because I never thought of that first, was it because I thought I had finished but turned out I hadn’t, was I jealous?

It was about looking at my reaction to situations and asking myself why did it bother me? Why did I react that way? Was it justified?

Going back a step, the reason for my experiment was due to an incident whilst taking Scott to the airport. When at the drop of point, the car in front of me, cut me up by crossing into my lane when he should have stayed in his. I did shout and toot my horn, and he was saying sorry, but I was mad. It wasn’t that we were going fast, it was a crawl.

We pulled up just ahead of the guy and I was over it in that second. As I was saying farewell, the guy pulled up next to me in his car and put his window down and apologised. I said to him, he gave me a fright which is why I reacted in that moment. He was lovely and we chatted and he went on his way as I wished him a good day.

It really shouldn’t have been such a big deal. It made me think, why? Why did I react that way? Even if he gave me a fright, I certainly overacted, particularly as we were all going so slow. It taught me a lesson, don’t always assume the worst and always question your reaction.

Now, I’m not saying my hormones/cycle/peri-menopause isn’t a factor into my reactions, however, even if it is, it is still good to question why as it isn’t an excuse.

So my first chance to try it out was at work, when I got frustrated at my laptop dock when it stopped working and I had to speak to IT to get another one. Ugh I was so annoyed I wanted to chuck my laptop out the window.

Why? Well I had work I wanted to get on with and this was slowing me down. Ok, but for the 10 minutes or so it took to get a new dock, plug it in and hook it up, it really didn’t make much of a difference to my day other than having to go under my desk and get a bit dusty. It was an inconvenience for such a small amount of time.

Ok, first why asked of the week, what else would happen?

Next, during the week I had a call and was after it finished I was annoyed at the other person, however, when I questioned why, I realised it was nothing to do with them, but about how I was feeling. It was all on me. They had brought up a valid point which I had missed and I was essentially annoyed at myself for not having thought of it. Ok, so I am not perfect, we know that, we can’t always think of or remember everything, so this was in fact a positive outcome. My reaction was wrong.

Interesting. Normally I would have put it on the other person and continued to be annoyed. How wrong was I?

I had a similar experience with an email I received, I spent time working on a document and passed it over and it came back with a number of edits/track changes. This is normally fine to me but for some reason that day it annoyed me. I worked my ass off on that and to have it come back to me with changes and additional points, felt like I had wasted my time.

Eh, over reaction or what! I asked myself why? I was frustrated as I thought I was now complete, and it was done but now I had to spend a few minutes accepting these changes. Wow big deal. It took less than a minute and the impact on my day was nil. It is always good to get others to question, edit your work, as they may see something you didn’t.

Once again, this was about me and not them. My annoying perfectionist persona was getting in the way. I know I am not perfect, but I like to do a job well. This made me feel useless – ridiculous I know. The pressure I put on myself is crazy.

Now I should say, whilst we often have moments of over reaction, sometimes our reactions are justified. Again, ask yourself why but note if your reaction was correct in that moment.

Thinking about all the times we get frustrated, annoyed or angry at other people, are we really annoyed, angry or frustrated at them? Or is it at ourselves?

Question why and you may be surprised by what you discover about yourself. You can then catch yourself reacting the same way in future. Why not try it for a week and see how you get on. Write down your experiences, and reflect on them at the end of the week. Do you see any patterns emerging?

I don’t sit in a place of anger, annoyance or frustration, it certainly isn’t my default setting, most of the time I am going about my day happily. I found asking why to be a game changer, it has really made me think about my reactions and what is really at the heart of them when something comes up.

Thank you for reading, have a great week and look after you.

Love Emma xx