Today’s coping tip is to respond to a difficult situation in a different way.
There are plenty of difficult situations I find myself in, some of which create lots of emotion. Anger, fear, frustration, and more.
One thing I tried to do recently was accept the emotion and then let it go. I didn’t express it back to the person and instead made an internal effort to acknowledge there was something I didn’t like and then take a moment. I stepped back and tried to re-examine the situation as if it were happening to someone else.
I asked myself what role should I play, what was the intent of the other party, what part of the situation am I really responsible for? Doing this helped me to realize that while my emotions were valid, they would have had me become defensive or short and overreact to the situation rather than just focus on my part and my role. I learned some of this from Doing Hard Things.
Hard to describe without giving details, and I don’t want to disclose who/what/where as it’s private. The main thing was making an attempt to respond differently to a situation than I had in the past.
I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.